Dave Casotti, Boone Mayor, June 2, 2026

Yes, on our program today, visiting with Mayor Dave Cassotti. Good to have you back. Good to be here. Thanks, Jim. You made it. And busy meeting. It was. Very busy meeting. We had a lot of different things that came up for the City Council and just get started right away and let everybody know. First thing up, your first opportunity would be, my guess, to have a chance to hear from the Humane Society and again, contract renewal that obviously a budget of $392,000, hard to believe. It is. For a group that roughly started about like 50 years ago, you know, and so, but again, cost keep going up. They asked for a bigger increase, but willing to take anything and Council said, let's go with 2%. Yeah, when I asked for eight, we went with two. But yeah, that's first time I've met anybody from the, I think, I mean, in recent years I think maybe in the past, I know a few people that worked there, but yeah. But yeah, asked for eight, settled for two and well, we settled on two. They didn't settle on two, but feel bad about that, but it's. And one of the things, and she did explain to you comparisons, but cost per animal and the kinds of things like that and what's the average and it's data that shelters keep track of. Right. It's been a good presentation, so just it's one of those services that it costs to do. It does. And it's when funds are limited, it's, it's hard to, you want to, but you can't give out all you, all you want, all they want all the time. So, unfortunately, well, I know this is the first time I think in a while they've been in task for a, a little bit of more of an increase than what we've had to ask, but again, that's one of the things that they keep working on and they face challenges just like you guys do. Exactly. The Council did go ahead and set dates on a consultation for public hearing. I think that's coming up in June. This is to take some property out of the Southeast Boone Urban Renewal Area. I think this is part of the helping the supervisors out with their project. Right. So, got to do the process and go through all the steps on that. The other consultation in public hearing is going to be on the East Central Housing Urban Renewal Plan. This is the one property north of Cap Erby, south of the middle school, and Hunsuckers got some plans ready to move forward. Yeah, they're moving dirt, so it's, they need, it's rolling. Need to do this. This, one of those things that will help them facilitate some of their, the infrastructure. They put it in at your requirements and you reimbursed them some of the costs. Correct. So that's how that works out. The other one that will be coming up is, we are going to have a hearing again on July 6th, basically for the State Revolving Loan Fund and several dollars that are coming from the State Revolving Loan Fund. Water and sewer. Yep. Basically the big thing there. It's great that we can get that coming in, so yeah, we need it. All right. Council did go ahead and approve an economic development, basically a request to submit an application for workforce housing. This is a downtown project and I'd like to see those. They are looking to do a little more than just put in a couple of apartments, so they're looking to take you, make use of the Cities Bee Diff program and redo the facade and the whole works. Yeah, it'll be, it'll be good once we get it rolling. Start filling up some buildings and bringing in some business and some apartments and yeah. This will be, what, 705? 705 story? I'm bad. I think it's C-More. Yeah. C-More properties? Yeah. Yeah. The other one that will be pursuing a community development block grant will be on the old Virginia building looking to put some apartments in there. I know that came up a little later in the meeting, so again, that's one of those people keep saying, where's the restaurant and I don't know if he's going to do it or not, but not in that location, but yeah, that's where they're looking at and that's like I got confused on the other one, but that's, yeah, that's where they're looking at putting four apartments up and possibly two in the lower half with a business below as well, but it won't be, that's not where the restaurant will be, so more to come on that. Okay, so did not work out the way they had planned? Nope, not the original plan. Try something else. Yep. We do have, again, a new, or an engineering firm we haven't worked with before, but it's going to, has been retained to help put together the industrial park. Here, we talk about all these other projects, you've got your system that you still have to maintain and take care of. Right. Water tower out in the industrial park, budgeted already, the dollars are in the budget, it was a capital project, they do rehab work on there, Dixon Engineering going to do it, about $8,500 to help walk through everything. Yep, figure out what we need and give us a list and go from there. They also, last night council did approve purchasing and truck, snow plow. Yep. Well, we hate to say it, but they do, they use them for more than just being a snow plow. Right. Big thing here, you know, when people look at, I don't know if they understand 250,000, almost 260,000. Yeah. For an outfitted truck. Yep. It's, that's crazy, but that's what it takes. It's, we're doing that. Yeah. Same time, you did ask Wayland Andrews to explain a little bit about the first street project and why, why it wasn't going to be done this summer. Yep. And that one still hurts. To me and I know, although it's citizens of Boone wanted to see that done so bad, it needed, it needs done and it will be done, but it's going to get pushed to next year unfortunately. SEH, the engineering firm got backed up because they had, had lost some staff and we had to move some of the staff that we use them for to the water tower, other, or the other, some of the other projects and unfortunately that one, like I said, that one really bugs me, but it's not, it's not on Wayland and it's, you know, you hate to point fingers, but it's, that hurts. Really wanted to get that done this year. So and it will get done next year. And would he say roughly about halfway through the plans? Yeah. Yeah. And again, as staff had explained, one year we do the planning and the next year we do the project. Yep. Unfortunately, you got to have plans. The dollars you're using require you to go through the D or T. Correct. Yep. And if you don't have appropriate plans, it's a little hard to do the business. It is. So, yep. Do we find a different engineering firm? What do we do? Well, again, this is a perfect example of having Dixon work on the water tower project. So we'll see. I know you guys got a lot of things with SEH going anyway. We do. We got a lot, we put a lot on them, so I don't want to really hammer them either. It's just, that's one of those projects I really, really wanted to see happen this time. And I didn't have anything to do with it to start with, but once I knew we were having it, it's like, we're working on that project. I wanted to see that one through, and that's, we will, but it'll be next year, so. Now, we'll, and then we got the other one that comes right after it, North Lynn will follow up probably right in the next year, because you do save dollars to do those projects. You pay one year, and then you save up your money for it, and then you get so much money every year. Yep. And it just takes more to cover all of it. I know. It's, if it was as easy to get it to come in, and it's just to go out, it'd be a great thing. Yeah, I know. That's, that'd be a good one. That doesn't happen. Let's see. A couple other things. Mike Cornelis, didn't have a lot of things saying, doing a lot of work in the parks, getting trees out of there again with Reg Rye coming, but I did say the pool's going to be open today. Pool's open today. Yeah. But he's ready. He's got pretty much pool weather. And everybody right away, I think Facebook, go to the Boone Swimming Pool, Facebook. I think if they want to make contact or find out information. Yeah. Prices for, you know, for the fees, for the yearly fees, the daily fees, and so forth for family and singles. And I know it's open 12 to 1 for adults, and then 1 to 8 is open to the general public. So, and feel free to go. Yep. So it's ready to go. It's a busy place. Let's see, Chief Webold, he had a number of different things for you. Yep. You sat in on some of the civil service work, got a chance, your first chance to do that and watch them at work? Yeah. That was kind of interesting. I'd never sat in on, I've sat out on interviews, but not for a police officer, so interesting. So they go through their steps and then put together a list for the chief and then more interviews come up after that. Yep. Again, handled through the department, but list of four candidates, got a vacancy in the department. Correct. So looking to fill that and a couple of, what, three, three of the four I think are already certain parts. Correct. Yep. I was going to say three of the four, and the fourth one would be ready to go to the academy. So, yep. So we'll see which, again, we'll find out later what the, what the process turns out. I know it's a, it is a process. Yep. We did interview that I sat in on was a good candidate, so it's, but it's good to have a bigger pool. Yep. There used to be days when there was double that, you know, but they did have a number of interviews, not all of them on the, on the certified list. Right. He did ask the request because you do have officers that are busy doing investigations and for some reason in this case, well, right away the council wanted to know if it was a change of venue. Madison County, Ohio, right. He has to go testify, but it's, it was a cyber crime. Yep. Something to do with the internet and cyber crime. So. He is, you've got people that are working on that. Yep. You might not realize it. There's, yeah. And you'd be amazed at the things that they're working on that we have no idea about. So. Which is good. Yeah. That's it. You do have that agreement now with the school district on the school resource officer. I think most council pretty supportive of keeping that position. Yeah. For sure. The school, a little crunch with their budgeting. So again, worked out a new agreement with the city, but council did approve that. Yep. We want to keep the officer in there. So that's, I think it's a big benefit for the school. Yep. And we did already mentioned about the Virginia building going, trying to move forward with some apartments in there. More discussion, I guess the easy way to say it is finance officer. We had a person in there and again, they're stepping away from the position. Where do you go? And what do you do? How do you join the list of communities that are trying to find good finance? Right. It's tough. And Andrea's done a lot of back behind the scenes work, looking for, looking for a head hunter for us just to find one. And you can't even find that. So very limited resources. But we're kind of, we want to get this taken care of ASAP so that take some of the load off Andrea because she's working on finance now again, as well as city administrator and training and it's, it's a lot. So we really are trying to, you know, speed this process up, although we want to make sure we have the perfect candidate as well. So it's, this is a tough one. Her, the proposal again to the council was if we don't go with a head hunter firm, let's set up a team, a committee, and it would be potentially other finance officers in the area of the vicinity in the community to help with this and, you know, spread the word. I get people to apply for it and then start a process of going through to try to narrow it down and find the appropriate candidate. So if anybody out there listening knows someone, get ahold of Andrea, get ahold of me, let someone know at the city and we'll, you know, we'll look into it and. And once again, looking for that, basically she said, at least accounting, preferably CPA, finance degree, so those kinds of things. That's what you'll be looking for. At the same time, she also had a suggestion because we do have an open position to make an assistant finance officer, basically someone you could have in training that should, because she said life spans about five years or so. They move from one position to another, but correct. In this case, you would have somebody that would be able to step up. Right. And we need someone to help out. Anyway, it's, yeah, it's a position we're looking to fill that's empty now with the council payable and so forth. So, but yeah, they would definitely be a backup then to the finance officer and a lot there. There's a lot. Yeah. All right. Out of the consent agenda, the council did approve that resolution with gray ball construction to do the green space stage replacement. Yeah. People have some comments about that. I know I've had. Some people say some things about the cost, but they were the only contractor that was willing to do it. Correct. Yeah. And I, they're going to get started fairly soon. So that's good. I think it's probably less than what they typically would be doing for their company, but still, steel structure. Yep. It's explained to folks again, going with the steel structure, a tomatich engineering designed it. And we still have a lot of the wood that had been used in the, in the original stage area. So they'll be wrapping the start structure with it will be incorporated. So it'll look like it's wood, but it'll be steel and strong and won't go anywhere. Okay. This time. So, well, well, providing we don't have an earthquake or something worse. Yeah. Something even worse. The ratio or something. Let's not do that. No. I did want to ask you a couple other things, of course, that have happening. You got to do ground breaking out at egg certain. Yes. Found out a lot of stuff about that. Did you? Yeah. Just did that yesterday. And that was a, that's the second time I've been out there because we had a county economic development meeting out there and got a, got a tour of the facility then. That's a, if you've never been out there and they, they ask people if you'd like to come out and get a, get a tour or stop out sometime and they'll set one up. They might be able to do it right then, but it's, it's amazing. I had no idea what they did really. And some people don't even know they're out there, but they, it's amazing what they're doing, what they're adding on to, which is going to be a water treatment facility of their own. Well, they'll just recycle the water they're using for cooling and Dan O, the, the president and CEO out there is just, he's an amazing guy and it's super good to talk to. And yeah, it's, it's a great company out there. I knew there for the facility they've got, it was about three years ago. They got the grant from the state to move forward with this and again, taking the water that they have instead of constantly pumping in water from the city, they will reduce usage noticeably, which is good about the same time that they're moving into this direction. You're going to have another big user coming online. Right. So it's going to be a huge, huge benefit to us for them doing that. So it's, but yeah, they're talking, I think roughly about an eight million dollar project, aren't they, to treat their, treat their water and reuse it. And then that, that, of course, that handles, sort of takes care of a lot of the waste that you have that comes down to the water environment station too. Yeah. And it cuts down on their cost too, because right now they're taking the water and, and trucking it down to Des Moines to a facility down there to take care of it. So that'll, they'll still do that a little bit, but nowhere near what they're doing now. So we got, got that, well, you got to do that. That was pretty good. Some of the other things I know you talked about once again, still like to come up with a plan for the 250th. I don't know if you're running out of time or not. Well, kind of. I get it. I wish I would have thought of this in January or February, but we're looking into banners, at least now going maybe from Hancock to, to highway 30. There's already brackets there. That's the main thing on this one. DMA, or the chamber, someone used to put banners up there. They're about 18 by 36. We have done some research already and we may be able to get banners in time. It's a cost. So I will throw this out if I may. And nothing's official yet, but if you're interested in this project, it would be banners for the 250th anniversary of the United States. And we'll make sure we get the right banners. But if you would like to help with this, possibly, I say adopt a banner, you'd be purchasing the banner, but there's about 30 some of them between Hancock and 30. So I went out and checked them one night so I could kind of get an idea. So I know I'm going to look at getting one if we can make this happen and it's going to have to be a very accelerated program. So I don't know how much, if we can make it happen or not. But if you're interested at all, contact me. If it's all right, I'll get my number out again. It's 515-460-1107. Feel free to reach out. And then if we can make this happen, I'll reach back out and we'll get this done. Like I said, we only need about 35 of those banners somewhere in there. You have a city email address? I do. I don't know how often you check it. I'm bad with emails. I'm horrible with emails. I was just wondering if people were too. Yes, I'll get that. You think you could call and leave a message at City Hall too? That or like I said, the cell phone number, I don't have a problem giving that out. Call me or text me and I will get you the, my city email, if you call the city hall, they'll give it to you. I don't even, I can tell you where it's at, but I don't use it enough and that's my fault. But I'm not a technical guy and I'm not sitting in an office all day where I can check emails. But yeah, I'll get that too. Maybe next time I'll bring it and get that out there too. All right, so get, try, good luck on getting that done. Not, you know, here we are. You got like less than a month here. Yeah, I don't know, about two weeks if we really want to make that happen. Well, we'll keep working on that too. A couple of the other things quickly, the council did go ahead. Arts advisory board is now, the ordinance has been taken care of, but economic development is, it's going to fall under them and they're already talking about how they're going to move forward. Yep. And for those that might be wondering, yes, the, the swim team, was it the smooth area summer swim team board, right, emphasize the board has not been doing very much. We've got some people that are handling it, but the board hasn't been doing too much. So we're getting rid of that ordinance to get rid of that, just disbanded that board. Doesn't mean there won't be a summer swim team, which just again, it's one of those things that's not going to fall underneath the city. So we'll have, we'll make it, we'll make it work. Oh yeah. Keep going forward. Yep. Again, just some of the things from the council meeting last night. So you're going to have busy, let's see, here, we still have another meeting yet here in June. Yep. And getting ready for Raghbri and she's going to be a busy summer, isn't it, you think so? And yeah, and I was going to point out real quick, we've got a basement going in already on the Southwest, housing development out there across from Kate's Landing. Okay. So out there at, I can never think of a name of that one. Oak Park. Oak Park. Yep. The Oak Park subdivision. There's one lot purchased already. Basement's going in. So things are rolling. It's going to be a crazy summer, which is great. We like to have everybody busy doing things too. Once again, got some committee meetings that'll be coming up probably here in June, but the next council meeting will be on the 15th. Correct. And otherwise, night on the green this Friday? Yes. Yes. It's Friday, first Friday of the month. Yep. So we'll have that one going on and hopefully Mother Nature cooperates with us. Let's hope so. Again, our guest on our program today, Dave Cassati, Boone Mayor, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, Jim.