Dave Casotti, Boone Mayor, May 19, 2026

Visiting today with Mayor Dave Cassotti. Good to have you here, Mayor. Good to be here. Thanks for having me. So we've had a long meeting. Well, we had a closed session meetings that we don't know about. But again, one property sale, potential property sale was one and the other was personnel related. I was going to say, I think I just got here right after the meeting, so that's how long it was. It feels like it. No, I'm just tired, but it was good. Very busy. Had a lot of things on the agenda last night, a lot of different things going on. Yep. I'm going to, we'll just start right at the beginning because one of the first things up is a portion of the local option sales tax. 5% goes to human service agencies and you have a separate committee doesn't one council member on that committee. The others are all community volunteers. Yep. And Kyle, Kyle Langstrom on that committee now and basically take a look at applications that have been received. And we did award, what, 80, I think it was 80,000? Yeah, right around 80,000. Yeah, had about 99,000 in request. Yep. And 80,000, that's the 5% of the local option sales tax for human service. So, big one herd of 25,000 and 13,000 for impact. Those are the two big ones, but at several others that were in there. Right. You get that, got to do it every year. Yep. Yep. That's the distribution. Yep. That's good. We had a lot of other things going on as well. Do I really want to go too much into the community development block grant thing? Let's go to the part where we did take formal action. You have selected the CERMs. The recommendation is to use simmering quarry for your applications and the administration. The grant writing, yep. They've been very successful for the city, actually, but very successful for most communities when they work with them to get secure grants. And you got some big ones going here. One is for that North Water Main project and the other is going to be for adding to the well field, which need that additional capacity. Yep, it's all going to be big ones. So those are going to be taken care of. We did get the budget amendment. I know that. I actually even looked to see what were we changing for. Increased cost, obviously. That was one of the big ones. Fuel, chemicals for the water plant. Again, all those prices went up. Yep, all things that are needed. Additional water meters and things like that. I heard about that in the utility committee part. Right. We even need water meters just for a rag bride, just temporary meters for a rag bride too. So, yeah. I got to figure it out. Big question is, and that was one of those things that came up and I know talked about it. But I'm going to go back to Bea Yupa, who came up and she was one in the public comment time. Gave a nice presentation about encouraging the council to consider urban chicken ordinance. And you thanked her for it. It was a great presentation. You can tell she's passionate about the subject. So, I thanked her for that. We'll consider it. We'll talk amongst, you know, kind of figure out if the council wants to pursue that, we will. So, we'll just kind of play that by ear. So, see what happens. I think the last time they voted on it, this was before you. Right. I think it was a five to two vote. And only one position has changed since then. Right. My feeling is, the gut feeling is kind of what, getting feelers out there that it's still about four to three, so against it. We'll see what happens. Anyway, that's one of those many projects there. A lot of change orders for infrastructure work going on. One who does work like that. I don't do it to that scope, but yeah, that's... There's a lot of, I mean, you know, there's a lot. But you've got some pretty substantial projects going on. We do. The work going on, the Hancock Drive Water Tower. And again, utility committee went through all of these and forwarded on the recommendations. We do have some other important things that are happening. One of the things is, yes, if you're going to build it, if you're going to do a new well down there in your well field area, you've got to have an archaeological study. There you go. Right. A lot of people probably don't think about that. But, and when I was reading through that, it's like, yeah, I never really thought. I mean, I know there's, you know, that's Indian ground back then. My dad used to take me arrowhead hunting down by Fraser and down by the river. So yeah, that, you know, something that most people don't think about. You don't get it. But we do have a company that has been retained to do that. Another one is going to be, we're moving forward with the next phase of the inflow and infiltration part. WHKS, said he's been working with them for, well, this is going to be the eighth year or eighth phase. That's a lot. And again, they've, I call it the some pump inspection program. It's easy. But I know you get people that get a little upset about it sometimes, but bottom line is trying to keep stormwater out of the sanitary sewer. Correct. Yep. And that's, you know, even I, when I had to have mine done, I didn't, you know, it's, I had mine pumped. I had the valve, but I still had to take the valve out. And I, you know, it's, it can be frustrating, but they've got to do what they've got to do. So one thing they made that decision a long time ago that's a lot of times people would just forget or for one reason or another wouldn't do it. And it was just easier to do this. Correct. It does create other issues though with a lot of water getting pumped into the street and stuff like that, especially when you get into colder weather. Right. So we've got those to deal with. Let's see. Some of the other things that came up. You mentioned, let's talk a little bit about the reg bri and the issue on the water, water meters. I know that was one thing they talked about. I had a number of different things to discuss about that. But bottom line is they wanted the council to know, at least from the utility committee side, that they're going to bring something back for action. It is by ordinance, you're supposed to charge so much, but it is up to the council that whether they want to waive any fees associated with it. Yep. Like I said, it'd be a temporary meter and then whether or not we want to charge for that water. So most of it just to keep track on volume usage, things like that. Correct. Yep. We know it's going to happen. Don't we? It's going to be there. Yep. One of the other things that we're moving forward with, and that was the payment going out to absolute. They are doing the extension of Hancock Drive, getting pretty close to completing at least their work on it. Yep. Then it's a matter of waiting for the traffic signals and getting those installed. Right. And that's been delayed as last I understood. That's going to probably be, that's what's going to hold things up a little bit, the traffic lights. It'll be maybe July. Right. Maybe. We'll see. We'll see. The one part that we did here last night that was disappointing is that we're not going to have a first street overlay project. I'll let you talk a little bit about that. Well, that was very disconcerting to me. I hadn't talked to Wayland about that. I thought about getting with him and seeing where we were. That's the first I'd found out about it last night too. I fell out of my seat when I heard that because we need that done. It's unfortunate and I understand there's delays and things. It has a lot to do with the engineering firm being backed up and different things holding them up. It's disconcerting. It'll get done, but it's not going to get done when we thought it was. It'll be next year. It'll be next year, along with then possibly Lynn Street is the next one on the list. You already have the dollars set aside for us. They're not going anywhere. I'm bummed about that. I don't drive first street every day like a lot of people do. When I do though, I cringe. Like I said, I just wish we could have made it happen. Some things are out of our control. You're using the same engineering firm for a lot of your big infrastructure work, water and sewer projects as well. You're keeping them filled out there is what you're doing. Right, we are. Unfortunately, that got delayed. On the CIP, the Capital Improvement Plan, north Lynn Street, 11th to the north, that's the next on the list unless something else comes up. Right. We'll see, at least at this point. That definitely needs done out there too. As well as many others. Kind of go by what's needed most. I think the one thing people need to know is the dollars for it because of the street that it is, some of them are the dollars that we get federal state money that comes in, gets designated for certain kinds of roads and can't use it on other residential streets. You got to have those main ones. You can use those dollars. I know. There's a lot more. If you had $30 million, you could do a lot of paving. You could do a lot of street projects. Speaking of which, I don't know. That'll be coming up. I'll talk to you about that towards the end here. That project went away. We do know that we have a contractor now that has stepped up and says they'll do the stage up here on the green space. That also has been a bit of a challenge finding somebody who would take that responsibility. It's been a big challenge which I didn't think it would be. There's so many little things within that contract that made it the insurance, the bonding of it. To make sure it doesn't fall down again and things like that. I don't know if I can say. Go ahead. Gray Boss is going to do it. I already said it. I didn't even catch that. Gray Boss stepped forward. They're going to do it. When I first heard the pricing of it, I thought it was just the labor. It's the labor and material. If we keep waiting on it, it's just going to continue to go up. Construction costs are going up quicker than normal inflation. This has been designed. Thomas Hitch Engineering did it. Which did create some concerns on some of the contractors that would be doing it. Because they'd have responsibilities. We're talking a steel framework. Right. Steel framework and then like the posts I think are going to be wrapped with oak or whatever it is with wood. It'll be done right and it'll look nice. It won't go anywhere. Once they get the contract done, they're hoping to have it done by Labor Day. That's what the plan is. Keep my fingers crossed. We've got Puffer Billy coming up. It'll be nice to have it done for all of that. They've done big enough projects. Again, this is relatively small for them. Right, it is. They also have bonding capacity too. That helps. That's a big thing. I don't know if this is where I can jump in maybe. You know about this stuff. On the green space, if you drive downtown today, you'll notice that they're pouring the concrete pads for the picnic tables. That's another thing that's happening down there. We've got it there and over here at the Veterans Park too. They're going to have a couple of permanent picnic table locations. You'll see that happening. We're working. Try to keep moving forward with it. As we mentioned, Simmering Corey has been retained to do a lot of your work on writing grant applications and doing this. I don't know how long we have to wait to find out, but hopefully they'll be successful with it. They're also, of course, doing all your codification. We talked about that last time. Fortunately, they didn't send you a long list of things to do again. Let's see. I know that some of the other things that came up last night, you had some appointments and various boards and commissions. Yes, these did go forward, folks. Yes. We had quite a few, again, Civil Service Commission, which has been busy helping police department. They got to get another list. That's going on. Amy Landis back on there. David Byrd on planning and zoning. Correct. Then we got Scott Kelly planning and zoning. Zoning Board of Adjustment, Tony Herrick. Sarah Dvorsky, Library Board. Library Board, you got a couple of them in here. Sarah and I think Barb Reardon is back on there. Who else did you? Oh, Rachel. Rachel McKinney. We got all of them appointed to it. At the same time, the Arts Advisory Board were in the process of wrapping up the ordinance on that, getting that repealed. Right. And just so everyone, I think I might have mentioned this last time or one other time, but the Arts Advisory Board is going away, but it will be, it sounds like it's completely gone. It's not. It's going to be in case. The mission is still there. Right. It'll be worked through and it'll become underneath economic development. So Linda Williamson and Lisa Cole Kelly will be instrumental on that, putting things together, looking for grants and looking for projects. And then it's just, it's kind of the way we ended up having to do it. It's not something we necessarily wanted to do. It was, it was pushed kind of by the state on how the funding of it can be done. So this way, under the auspices of economic development, you can do a lot of different things. Correct. There's some more flexibility, but again, the mission is still there. Yeah. It's just the structure is going to be redone a little bit. Yeah. It won't be a standalone committee. It'll be underneath economic development. So we'll make it work. We will. Yeah. And I know we will because they're already going to do art in the park stuff. Right. And they will have a group of people that will continue to work with them. Yeah. I don't think you're, I don't know if you have to appoint anybody to it, but we'll find out. Because of right now. No, we don't. And Linda's passionate about the arts, so she'll make sure we get some stuff going. So people are going to hear also ordinance dissolving the Boone area summer swim team board. Again, same kind of thing. I'm guessing. Yeah. That, and it hasn't been any activity on that for quite a few years. So there was, they figured there was really no sense on continuing the board on it. Yeah. Well, one of the things you talked about last night, your personal preference is we just do have our 250th anniversary. Again, the country coming up this year, you'd like to see if we can put something together, extend, put, put on a good face. Right. And I just think it would look great and we could continue it every year, but this year especially with having banners and flags up and down Story Street from 11th or 9th Street wherever we begin all the way out to South Story as much as we can. Just I'm a very patriotic guy. So I love to see that stuff and you know, it's to me, it's a little bit better than just flags stuck in the ground, which is fine too. But I would like to see something where we can have on the light poles banners or flags and keep it consistent in each area so that it looks nice. But what the problem is, it's a short amount of time. It's already middle of May. Yeah. And I'd like, you know, we'd like to have this up before or by July 4th and maybe keep it up and up through Labor Day. So again, part of the, there's some cost. There's cost involved in getting people to do that. Yeah. So but that's, you know, hopefully we can make it happen. So you threw that out again. We'll see what comes up with it. We already know we do flags downtown. We already have those, but you're talking about extend that all the way down to South Story. Right. As far as we can. Yep. We'll see. We'll see what happens. Yeah. The idea is out there. One of the other things that'll be coming up and I know with the governor signing the bill on property tax reform and again, I know discussions will be going on. I'm pretty sure part of your discussions last night in closed session maybe included some of what dollars are available and what's going to be happening. So, but even with that, still got to see exactly how it's going to set up. Right. Yeah. So we kind of prepared for the worst and I don't think it's, it's, it's touchy subject. Like I said before, I'd, you want to see property tax payers pay less property tax, but at the same time, that's how we fund a lot of our programs. So yeah, it's tricky. We'll have to look at it and see exactly how it's going to pan out. Determine what's essential. Right. Exactly. Got to do that. One of the things that will be coming in that will potentially have a price tag and of course, this was even before you, you got elected mayor, but the request from the council to the park commission to park board to put together a plan, 10 year plan, basically a comprehensive plan and pretty sure they've got a budget estimate on there. That'll be multi-million. Again, those are things you'll have to look at and see what and where we can do. Yeah. What we can do. That's going to be tricky. We want this plan, but yet how do we pay for it? We have cuts. It's, yeah, that's the fun part. So. Okay. That's one way to go. Well, yeah. Those are some of the challenges and not just Moon, but everybody else is going to be facing too. Right. It's going to affect every small community and even some of the larger communities. So. We got some other things to keep working on. Absolutely. Other things from the meeting you want to pass along? I didn't have any other special notes on things. Like I said, we have a closed session that took a little bit of time, but no, I think everything went pretty well. In the part of the closed session, again, one was personnel related, which again, that's usually closed anyway, and then potential sale of some property and hopefully getting close to being able to set up something there. Right. Yeah. I guess the only other thing I would bring up is back to the flag thing. If there's anybody out there that has ideas or wants to donate to the project, once we figure out exactly what the project is, we'd more than welcome to entertain anything like that. We have the other things that are going on. So, you know, we have people contribute to fireworks. Right. And I know in your finance office, it probably goes crazy. You're going to add another line for what? Right. Right. We will have flowers coming out for downtown, part of the Beautify Boon Project, they'll be coming out. I know there was another one. Oh, I know what I was going to add. It kind of came up in discussion with, well, actually came forward, Waylon Andrews talked a little bit about it, the research that's been going on, on cleanup. People, what's going on with the citywide cleanup. This was supposed to be in June, you know, it's not going to be in June. So right now, look, he's collecting a lot of information. Right. And yeah, I mean, you guys haven't gotten the chance to see it all yet, but no, we haven't. And that's something we need to get to fairly soon because we've had so much other stuff going on that we kind of let that, or at least some of the council or I have, and that we need to finalize the dates and we're getting a new flyer put together just so we can specify what we will take so that we don't have the issues we've had in the past. So yeah, we need, we're going to be working on that next soon. There's more to come. Yeah. But it will be in the fall. It's not going away, but it's just, like I said, we'll push it back to probably October. It'll be cooler for the guys picking stuff up, too. So we'll be the middle of July where they're out there in a sauna all day long. It is kind of interesting, yeah, the different communities and the different guidelines that they use and so he's been taking a lot of information looking at a lot of things from Metro Waste, so how they structure it and what they do. So we'll see what we end up with. We'll have something. We'll have something fairer. And hopefully, relatively, you know, it's going to probably be within the next month or so because at the same time, you got all the rag bright things happening, but something that the council is going to want to do to be able to get the information out to people. Correct. Yep. Keep working. He'll work on it soon, yep. If it was easy, you know, we wouldn't, we wouldn't have these long meetings. Right, exactly. Yeah. Mayor Dave Cassotti, our guest on our program today, thanks so much for joining us. You bet. Thanks, Jim.