Dave Casotti, Boone Mayor, August 4, 2026

Just on our program today we are visiting with Dave Cassati, Boone Mayor. Good to have you in, Mayor. Good to be in. Thanks, Jim. You got to keep having these long, busy, busy. Last night was shorter than the last couple of weeks. Well, that's true, but busy. But very busy. Yeah, there's a lot going on. A lot of things happened. I'm going to start right away with... Chris Blocker came in and obviously she knew she was going to give a little wrap of Raghbram. Downside, she talked about how everything went. Pale to mention that, thank you, Jim, for doing the weather. No, I don't want to take any responsibility for it. But the break in the weather was really good. And for anybody that had volunteered the night before in the downpour following council meeting, as you well recall, you're trying to get out of there. They were out there trying to set up in that downpour. Wow. Yeah. That's some dedication. It is. And it's funny with the weather thing because I sat with a couple people during the day on Raghbram from people from out of town or out of state. And I said, you wouldn't believe this, but Boone's like this 365 days a year. I don't think anybody bought it. Nobody was buying that, right? No. Well, it did turn out pretty well. And actually as part of the public comment time, you did have one of the downtown business people came in and disappointed that they weren't able to see more bicycle traffic downtown. But that was one of those things. I don't know if he had been a part of it in the beginning, but again, the big part was public safety. How are you going to be able to cover all that space? Yeah. And I was involved in that part of one of the early meetings about that. And it was a public safety. And, you know, it stinks that we couldn't have them come down through downtown. But hopefully, I know some of them made their way down there as well. So there was some traffic, probably not the volume they were. They were hoping for. But then again, I don't know how many actually those that were staying at my place didn't depart to go down to airball. I'm sorry. Right. There were a lot of them that did not go. I know. I have a buddy that used to be from the Boone area and he came through and I didn't even get to see him because he stayed at his campground in McCose. Never came down to South Stores. Yeah, there were a bunch of them that just got settled in and enjoyed the evening. So. Well, anyway, that was a rag ride this time around. Yep. And the other thing she talked about is some of the promotional things that are going on. And obviously, we've got some Boone ads, some TV ads out there. And I've got some new billboards and things like that. But we still have a lot of traffic coming up here over the next month. We do. That's another busy time. So it's not ending, is it? No, that's fine. It's just turned around. And here we have another one. Yeah. Of course, some of the things business of the council last night, did the public hearing on the Community Development Housing Needs Assessment. That is essential when you're doing block community development block grants. And once again, it determines based on income and things like that, how much you qualify for, basically. And Boone's been pretty fortunate that we've been able to meet some standards and get secure a lot of block grants. Right. It's been great. And hopefully that continues. So that part in there. And then the Industrial Park Water Tower, we had already seen some preliminary things on this. So the public hearing held that's a project moving forward. Yep. It'll be a little while before that starts, but yep, that'll move forward. And when we talk industrial park people, we're talking the one out by fairway, right? That's the Stripe Tower out there, which we talked about it last, the last time or a couple of times ago, when a engineering firm had been here, when the groundwater reservoir was being rehabbed, they had to use the water towers for their backup water supply. So they didn't get a chance to really look inside very much. But anticipating, there's going to be some work that might stretch into the next fiscal year. Right. And it's funny you said that Stripe Water Tower, because I think when we're all said and done, it won't be striped anymore. I think I'm not 100% certain, but we'll see what they end up doing with it, too. Is it lime green? No, maybe not. I don't think lime green. Well, I'm wondering, I'm trying to remember, was it painted striped because of the airport? And I don't recall. Yeah, I don't recall that part either. So we'll let them deal with that. That's why you have this engineering firm. We specialize in that. Last night, Council did, and you had been at the Public Safety Transportation Committee meeting, and I think it was just last week. And the things that they had presented, a couple of them were going to require ordinances. So they brought the whole works from their meeting to the Council. And one of them to do a stop sign around West Fifth to two-way stop. Right. West Fifth, you do have a person that's disabled sight and hearing disabilities, and has they seen an eye dog, but a little concerned about the speed of traffic in their neighborhoods, because she tries to cross the street and the dog keeps stopping her. Right. Yeah, that's a concern. I live just east of that, so that part is just west of me. And I don't go down that way very often, but I know that there has been some. It's just west of McPherson and east of Marion. But, yep, I can see your point there. And, you know, all she asked for were a couple of these notifications, you know, blind individual or blind resident, or something like that. But as Wayne Lynn Andrews pointed out, they kind of did away with those guidelines. So DOT and the state have taken those out of the loop. So then you have to look at another solution. And I think your staff basically recommended two-way stop to try to slow that traffic down. Try to slow it down there, yep. So I think that's what we're looking at doing, yep. The other one, which was pretty much an automatic, and that's the livery, they had asked to have a handicap accessible parking space right in front there. And as Wayne Lynn Andrews said, when they started taking a look at it, it was probably the best place to have one and going to relocate one from the north side of the street to the south side. Right. And there's already a ramp right there into the curb and the sidewalk. So it's kind of the perfect location for one. And there has been complaints about the one that's across the street to the north because the signage is so high that people parked there don't know it's handicap and then end up with a ticket. So that'll alleviate that too. We'll get rid of that part of it too. The other one were, again, you had a lot of people inquiring about, and that's out there by Eastern Star Masonic Home in Elaine Circle. We have a lot of people now living in Elaine Circle, and they do have handicap ramps to Mamie Eisenhower to cross over to the Eastern Star, but there's no crosswalk there. Right. And the issue is, how far do you go with that? And again, the committee tabled it and brought it to the full council for discussion. Right, because there are, well, there's the school crossing just to the west of there, then there's another one for Eastern Star to the east of there. So that'd be three of them within, I believe they said it was 600 feet, but I think the school one's eventually probably going to go away and be moved. They're working on that. Yeah, that's in the works. But yeah, I thought it was important. I mean, it's, you've got the elderly folks, older folks, I should say, but that's where they cross. And those, that housing area is for Eastern Star, and they walk across to the fitness place that they have inside there for the pool and so forth. And so one of the things they had asked about is the flashing red, right, which would require a stop. And that's something that I think public works in the police department. They had some concerns. Right. And they're cost prohibitive. I mean, we, that shouldn't come into play when it's safety, but at least with the crosswalk, you know, and there's other signage up so that people are aware. And chief Weebel talked about people, some people think that if you're standing there ready to cross, that traffic has to stop for you, which he said they don't, but they do if you're in the crosswalk, which kind of goes both ways. Because if you just walk out in front of traffic, that's a little scary. You may not get stopped. Right. So it's, but it'll help, I believe so. We don't make up the laws. No, no, we just, but again, should always be cautious. Right. Especially now, the council did agree. Again, this was not any kind of ordinance or anything like that, but did agree to go ahead and paint the crosswalk in there between the the handicap accessible things. And again, people just need to pay attention to where they are. So yeah, I know it's a traffic goes by. They're pretty good pace speed limits 25, but it does, you know, it's hard to, I don't know, 25 seems so slow anymore. And a lot of people, I think, feel that way. And they just don't pay attention and get going through there. So but yeah, hopefully that will help out a little bit. So eventually we'll get those lines in there. Well, one of the other things up was again, the Economic Development Committee prior to your meeting actually went down to the boss. The boss had at 7 10 story had actually come and applied to use the revitalize Boone downtown business grant. And they had completed their project. So they went took a look at it. But the city does require development agreement now. Yeah, when you have one of these, basically, it's okay, now we're doing this, we're giving you some money back, but you need to stay here. Right. Yeah. So you either you want a commitment to have them in that property. And if they're not, there is a if there's a payback and it's prorated and so forth. But I think they'll do fine. It's a nice building inside there. It's it's neat to go into some of these old buildings and see what they've done. So we got a lot of projects there to all right. Let's talk about. Oh, gosh, there were so many others that I know that you were dealing with last night. We did have minor change order. I guess again, this has to do with the Boone Ground Storage Reservoir project. Yeah. Evan was on hand from SEH. And basically, it's quantities. Contractors know about this. Yeah. Again, once you get to the end of the project, you know how much material you've used and you bid it on a price amount. Right. So it's a matter of finalizing some of the business there. It is getting pretty close to getting it wrapped up. Not quite done yet. Right. There's a few things that have to be finished up. So Jim, if I may jump back real quick, just economic development. Linda Williamson did also because she's on that arts board, but she's with economic development as well. And she brought up the article and I don't know how many people saw it or still get the Des Moines Register, but there was a nice article on Boone made the front page. And it was a very nice, informative, accurate story that they put out. So if anybody gets a chance to see that, I don't get the paper anymore. But it talks about Daisy and Daisy coming and also talks about the last plant they built in in Ohio. Right. And the kind of impacts that had as well. So anyway, I just wanted to get a plug for that article. It was good to see. So not just all about what the city was part of it, but the housing growth that you're seeing and all of that in there, too. Right. So it was, there's a bunch there. It was, yeah. Yeah, it was a nice article. Let's talk a little bit about the, I don't know much about the next sun pump inspection program. I think notificate. Well, I think people in that area have been notified and they've already been making contact about here's what I have set up for mine is this leak. You know, do I have to make any changes and things like, because they know that it's coming. Yep. Yeah. And bottom line is try to keep that stormwater out of the sanitary system. Yeah. The where we might see a little issue is with the smoke testing, smoke testing, which will start the day before the public meeting. Who knows? Yeah. But every weather permitting on that one. Right. And everyone, you know, they'll notify everyone. Hopefully everybody gets the notification and doesn't. And the fire department's been notified too that if they get some calls on smoke in their house that there's a good chance it's that not a fire, but they'll still obviously come check it out. So it's the eighth phase. And again, bottom line is it all started long before you were there. Right. But this is one of the efforts to try to at least at this point. Again, get stop that stormwater from getting into the sanitary sewer. Yeah. I don't know if you're ever going to get it all done, but I don't know. There are challenges. So we got a lot of public hearings coming up. We're there is a lot of public hearings. And I see that we've got basically next week, you must have a special meeting coming up. Yeah. A lot of community development block grant ones need to be done because I think deadline for a lot of those would be the end of the week or next week, the following weekend, that sort of thing before the next council meeting. So you got to get them done before we do. Yeah. So folks, if you're wondering, there will be that coming up. But the two probably big ones that are coming, you are going out on the state revolving loan fund again for water, plant expansion or water, waterworks expansion and wastewater expansion. Right. And these are you're running into now the major projects that tie in with Daisy. Right. Yeah. So these will be pretty substantial. Those are going to be on September 7th. You are going to have a council meeting on the 7th. Right. We are. Yep. It's it's Labor Day, but we're still going to hopefully can be a fairly short one to get, you know, we hate to do it on a holiday, but I can't do it on a Tuesday and we didn't want to move it to Wednesday necessarily. So everyone on the council was fine with keeping it on Monday. So that's what we're going to do. Yeah. Had a lot of discussion about a lot of different things. I'm going to go with the council member Mormon bringing up the the God's little, what is it? God's little pantry pantry. Yeah. Food pantry. God's little food pantry over here by the Presbyterian church. Yeah. Again, they would like to have it relocated. And so Jackie Frick who put it together. Yep. Kind of inquired and Terry says anybody got a problem with if we move it into the parking lot and take up one of the spaces. Yep. And it's looks like it's going to go through. We've got, I believe it leads going to move it. I think they're the ones that built it and put it where it is, but we're going to move it. They're going to anchor it. So I don't think it'll be any problem. I mean, it gets well used and well stocked. So that was one of the big things too. You do have a lot of people that do make use of it. People bring donations items to it. But again, a lot of that goes out at the same time too. But for whatever reason, it needs to be moved. No problem with that. And we can find a good spot there on that in that parking lot at eighth and eighth and green. So that if folks, if you see it happening, city just wants to help out. Yep. It's not going anywhere away. It's just being moved. So shift a little lot of traffic in that area between like the church and with the library and everything. So any impacts right down the street. So yeah, we get a lot of a lot of traffic in there. Alright, let's talk about some of the issues in the public comment time because in there, I got to talk first about the flooding matter first up to because you you had been notified about this. You actually had a few other people that had notified you about some of the issues. And this is we have like a new new company that bought up some of our rental properties. And this just so happened that the individual, the man that was at the meeting last night, the heavy rains back in the beginning of July, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And we did. We had some damage here in Boone. Most of it was probably more to the east where they saw the big flooding and several more inches right. But in this case, he had an apartment in the 700 block of seventh and it got flooded and he lost everything. He lost everything. And I feel so bad for this gentleman and he's an elderly veteran and just I wish there was more we could do and we'll look into it with with landlords and and we have a rental code that they have to abide by. But yeah, the poor guy and then he has mold and it's just that the landlords or the while the landlord slash who they hire to take care of things, the property management, they just I don't know, they dropped the ball on this and it became a health hazard for him. And so he's kind of dislocated. Yeah, he's lost everything. Yep. Lost everything had basically said he's homeless now. He's not going to be in Boone anymore. So we lose a resident. I mean, it's so hopefully if you have other issues, I don't want to say call me because I'm sure there's a lot of issues. But something serious like that, we need to jump on that quickly. And I know he did reach out to our SRO or CSL, I'm sorry. And and you know, he up to a certain point, but yeah, and the fire department was involved too. Yeah, and they they try to contact the property manager people or the owners of the buildings. And we can't get ahold of them either. So it's hard for us to to prompt if we can't get ahold of them. So it's it's a it's a bad situation that hopefully we can get it fixed somehow. We need that we need that company to be more responsive and take care of their properties. So just like we do as homeowners. So so that's one of those that came up and well, keep our fingers crossed. Yes. Get that result. Yeah, we had a few people talking a little bit about urban chickens again, coming in and respectfully asking, would you consider an ordinance? And at this point in time, you're still considering am I going to put it on the agenda? Yeah, it's still it's still up in the noggin thinking about it. So keep working on that one. It's a process. Well, it is. And I mean, there were several people on hand inquiring about that. Yeah, probably again. Well, I'm going to go with the others. I'll come back to nitrates at the because that was one of the others. But yeah, John Rosa landfill administrator there. He again, boom, county actually rents space from co transport to use that for recycling purposes. And he inquired if the city might be interested in building something like Ogden did to help with the recycling process. Yeah, I was out there one afternoon. Because with my business, we take stuff to the landfill and I was stopping I visited with him and he brought that up. I did not realize and I'll bet most people don't that they pay $650 a month to rent that space just for recycling just to have that there you have for recycling. So trying to partner with the city, like you said, like they do on Ogden and find a spot for them, which I think we have a spot possible. It would be in that parking lot north of like where the post office is on 9th Street there. And so if we can figure something out there with them and save the county some money, which, you know, in turn, along, yeah, well, he pointed out, he said, we make money by taking in solid waste. We spend money to do recycle. Right. Yeah. And that's it stinks. But that's the truth of it. Yeah, so we'll look into that and see if we can make something happen. And I know over the years, they tried to see about acquiring their own property in town and doing this and that never did quite work out. But in this way, similar to what Ogden did have the city collaborate with them. Yeah, we'll see. See how that proceeds. We've got that going on. We'll talk about now. Let's talk about the other part was about nitrates in the water. And again, that topic came up again. Yeah. Again, we are moving forward with the well field. And I know the questions coming up is the city doing anything are what where are they at? What's what's the plan? And even Council Member Jordan Hammer inquiring about is it really in the CIP? Right. Might not actually appear like in the active CIP, but there's a lot more right there is down the road. Yeah, projects. That's a that's a huge thing. And it's and again, people need to know and I think most do. It's not just a boon issue. That's a it's a statewide and somewhat nationwide issue. So but no, it's we have not kicked the can down the road. I know they keep saying that we may not need to do anything or the the DNR whoever till 2044. Well, we're not planning on waiting till 2044. We're monitoring that as the water plant and we do have we do have something in the works that but it doesn't happen overnight and it's not free. So first, don't you first have to get your projects done now and write out what you're going to be dealing with? Yeah, exactly. So it's it's a it's a process. So it's not but but we are working on it. It's not even way before I came in. I'm not I'm not going to take any credit on it. That's it's been in the works. There's there's things to be done in the future. And it's just again, it's a process. But like you said, we've got to get these projects done before we know what we need to do. So but no, it's been thought of there are projects that we're looking at possibly do. Well, we will do something at some point. So some of the things that had been looked at previously going with a Jordan well, right? And again, the cost of the Jordan well for what it would provide didn't seem too practical. And the DNR very reluctant to let people drill new wells. The DNR saying we can't tap into it. So that and then they inquired about doing a reverse osmosis, which would be a pretty sizable plan. Very, so be a total reconstruction. Yep. But if you did that, then they said you can't discharge the waste back into the river. You got to take it to your sewer plant, right? Which also creates a lot of additional costs. And we'll do what we need to do. But there's the bio and I there's a bioreactor bioreactor missile, which seems to be one of the new interesting. Hey, technology, they come up with stuff all the time. Right. I don't know exactly how that process works. I just heard about it. And I know there's a couple of places where they have it and others are looking at it too. So right, we're not the old again, not the only one. Right. Yeah. But you know, it's we look into it and see what it's worked in other places. And so but the bioreactor one thing with I yeah, I won't get into it either because I don't understand it. But but we're not the science. We are not. I'm definitely not. So but yeah, it's it's being looked into. We will get it figured out. We'll get it done one day, whether I'm still here and you're still here or not this will all be it will be this will all be taken care of thing that will be again going to be like for some would like more of an immediate answer. Right. So it's hard to do that when we don't know exactly what what's going to happen. So Friday night on the green come come downtown people come down for that. And this one is I think I might have said it last time because I got wrong. But this one is the one where they're going to give out 250 cupcakes for the 200 first 250 takers. So there's going to be a lot of cupcakes. So come on down and enjoy the there is going to have a little 250th celebration. Yeah, I think Tristan. Yeah, there will be music. There will be food trucks. Yeah, street will be blocked off again. Just like normal. We'll have good weather like we always do. All right, good. Go for that. Yeah. Again, Dave Cassati, Boone Mayor, our guest on our program today. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you,