Ondrea Elmquist, Boone City Administrator, April 29, 2026

On our program today, we are visiting with Andrea Elmquist, Boone City Administrator. Good to have you back. Good to be here. Andrea took her economic development connection trip to Washington. You were part of the group that Boone had a bit of a contingency, small group, a couple of council members and stuff. Yeah, council member Mormon and Ainsstrom and myself all went to D.C. last week. So for those that are wondering, it's all part Aims Regional Economic Alliance sets it up and it basically gets you in contact with not only the legislators, but the teams they have, the people they have. And you got a lot of things you get to learn from this. So this would have been your first trip out here. This is my second. Second? I went last year. Yeah. I went last year. Yeah, it would have been your first. Just getting the hang of it. Yes. I went along for the ride last year and learned a little bit. One of the things I know you had mentioned taken off was funding for community development block grants. And this is because this is something the city is really pursuing quite a few of right now. And they're not all states. Some of them are federal funded. Yeah, community development block grants are all federal funded. And they're an interesting grant that the federal government hands down the money to the state and the state makes the decision who gets those. We have a current one for the Ground Storage Reservoir. We will be applying for a roof grant CDBG grant for homeowners that meet low to moderate income to repair or replace their roofs. And then I've got two that will be on Monday nights, Council Agenda, one for the Louisville Well and another one for the North Transmission Main. Typically I can get about four to five hundred thousand dollars off of each of those grants. So for like the Ground Storage Reservoir originally with the original but beds, we were looking at that paying half of that cost. So again, any amount you look for because you're just looking at any way to help to phrase some of the costs. Absolutely. So the expenses. Absolutely. Anytime we can get, I'm going to call free money. It's not necessarily free because we do have to do a lot of work to get them, you know, there's a grant application, there's drawdowns, there's, we do hire an administrator to help with the legalities of Davis Bacon, which is, federal requirements, yes, federal requirements that they have to check over payroll for the contractors and things like that. So there is a lot of ins and outs to that. The one you mentioned on the, for homeowners that we're working on, we've done CBDG Community Development Block Grants for homeowners previously and a lot of it is just for some repairs within their home, things like that. Now, this one specifically you're focusing on roofing. Correct, correct. I believe we are maxed at six houses is what we can do with the Community Development Block Grant money. So about a hundred and eighty thousand dollars is what we're hoping for. All right, so these are just the kinds of, I mean, it's out there pursuing those and I'm thinking Brenda probably brings a lot of them to you. Yeah, Brenda and an organization called MIPA that we belong to, they're the ones that usually will provide us with a newsletter saying what grants are available. The actual application part of it is between me, myself, and then the administrator that we end up hiring. Yeah. I remember when the question came up, do we join MIPA, do we come apart of that? And they've provided quite a few services actually for the city, already did the couple of the housing studies that were done and I mean, yes, it does cost money, but it's a lot more economical. It kind of covers what we used to have, well, what many places have for council of governments. Correct, yes. Boone, in our region, we do not have a council of governments and that's kind of unique to Iowa and MIPA is not what we call a cog, so they do have some limitations, but for the most part they do act as the same as a council of government and actually Andrew from MIPA was out at DC with us so I got some time with him to connect and learn a little bit about their organization. All the different things they do. By the way, folks, if you're wondering, it's every time we talk about central Iowa transportation, that transportation, that part's included in there and Boone is part of that as well. Correct. So, yeah, it's kind of all false. One area or another, but it's not operated out of Des Moines, well, their offices. Yeah, their offices is in Des Moines. They are also the organization that will help me with the EDA grant that we are planning on doing for the water tower out on Hancock Drive. Which is, that's an even bigger one. Yeah. That could be a sizable grant, right? Yes, we're hoping for at least a million dollars out of that grant. Okay, everybody keep your fingers dry. Again, they are generally pretty competitive. Yes. We do the need-wise. All right, let's talk about some of the things came out. Obviously, budget got approved. Yeah. Yes. The budget is done. Let's talk a little bit about it, again, some of the things in the budget that folks might not be familiar with, but we did, you did manage to put some dollars in there. So the fire department has one of the big things going into the election and this budget was getting some of the additional staffers when the fire department became very busy and reducing some of their overtime pay, but having enough staff people on hand to respond to all the calls. Yeah. Earlier this year, council had decided to go ahead and authorize a fourth staffer utilizing part-time employees at 60% of the time. And I believe that in the new fiscal year 2027 budget, it is a fourth staffer utilizing part-time at 100% of the time. So you're going to have somebody around there. Yes. Yeah. Hopefully that works out, or at least it's not the ultimate solution that I know they were looking at hiring on additional people, but again, with what the budget has available, and I know you're still looking at what the state's going to do with property taxes too. Right. Absolutely. With that still up in the air, we just don't know where that may lead us in the next year or two. Yeah. Some of the other things that I got to ask you, let's talk about the website, shall we? Which for those that don't know, okay, or this is all of a sudden news to you, we've been working with the same company for a number of years, developed the website, made it pretty interactive as I think as much as they could do, and then you've got notification like early this year, like, we're not going to do this anymore, or we're not going to be able to support your website. Yeah. There's some federal regulations. We love that word federal regulations, don't we? But there's some federal regulation that is now requiring our websites to be ADA compliant by, I believe, April of 2027, and with that, we started looking into what our current website was able to do for us and quickly found out that they were going to no longer support the platform our website is hosted on as of December 31st of this year. And so therefore, we had to start looking immediately for a new website host with that. That means that we have to rebuild our website. We have chosen to go with revise. We interviewed and reviewed probably seven or eight different websites. We narrowed it down to two. The one was significantly more. So we did decide to go with the lesser cost option, but they also offered just, they offered the same type of product. So again, the services that we have had on the website now, the pay and everything else, which is through a third party because you got to have third party connections and stuff. So again, those are things that not everybody could do. Correct. And the big thing that we found was the workflow. That is the ability to go out and submit an application online and it automatically sends to us. You don't have to do a PDF. You don't have to print it off and fill it out and send it to us. This is the ability to go out and fill it out online and hit submit. Some of our applications are already that way. And that actually took out quite a few of the website hosts that could not handle that. So revise. And I know the council, they were pretty upfront said, let's not just go for the cheapest. Let's go for the one that does what we need to get it done and whatever the cost it is. Yes. With the way the world works right now, we all know that the internet, Facebook, social media, your website is really our only way of communicating. So, well, we do know that revise is going to do it by the end of the year. By the end of the year, they're about a six month process. We wish them well. Well, and again, they are familiar and we'll say we are not by far the biggest city they've ever worked with. They do Des Moines. Yes. You see the rabbits. Yes. That is one of the things that I looked forward to is that they were able to handle the capacity that we had. So that's going ahead. Yes, folks. We will end up with a new looking website out there. So keep updated. I mean, there are things like recently, you know, I was at a park commission thing and they were talking about, you know, going to the website and seeing the different parks. They don't know where to find it. You know, I've been there enough. I know where to go. But so it's, it is on the website, which just takes a little, little time finding the links for it and stuff. Some of the other things that came up, we did have an agreement with Raghbri the committee and the council did sign off on that. This is not only sponsoring some things, sponsoring a sponsorship, probably the lead sponsorship in there. But again, giving them some startup money. And I know that hopefully the city is going to be reversing a lot of reimbursed for a lot of that. So roughly about $30,000 that went through a difficult agreement there. And we're going to have the vendors kind of handle through there instead of having it two different entities doing the vendors, we're going to tie it all into one. Yes. They're going to handle the city side of it and then issue the city a check for, for the city portion of the license. All right. So Raghbri come in, we'll worry about that later. What were, oh gosh, there were so many other things that I was looking at to community development block grants for the big ones. Okay. I got to ask you because this, we talked to the arts advisory board created a couple years ago and the intent was, and it was created through an ordinance to be able to offer some connections to art type activities and different things that would be available. And you gave them a small amount of money to work with. And then we're finding out, no, we can't do that or it wasn't right. And plus you had a couple of, I am different applicants for the hotel motel tax, I think was, you found out that the auditor says state order, not specifically us, but other communities were being told, no, you can't do that or shouldn't be doing that. Yeah. So if you read the state law, it's pretty specific that you're not supposed to be giving out funds. The conversations or the trainings that I've been to is, yeah, you can, but it has to be a very specific guideline, primarily economic development or a service that somebody is providing to the community that the city is not providing itself. So in other words, any money given out for repairs to a facility that is not city owned, is not acceptable. Giving out funds for a art structure or art project that is not city owned or a city program would not be acceptable. The more I've heard communities surrounding us getting their hands slapped within their audit, the more I felt that we needed to follow those same guidelines and prevent us from getting in trouble too. So it wasn't noted in our audit again, but it's one of those things that's been showing up. It has. And to be honest, the Arts Advisory Board this last year was the first year that they gave out grants. Otherwise, it's always been city grant programs, so those things would have been okay. But the ordinance actually specifies the only purpose of the Arts Advisory Board was to give out grants. So that's why we are looking at removing that. We're going to have an ordinance amendment. Yeah, we're going to withdraw it actually. We are going to withdraw that. Yeah. And again, structure it so it will work still working, but under the Economic Development Committee. So yeah, it will be more of a city program or city owned art type of situation. Okay. Well, we'll get there. Yeah. One way or another. So yeah, some new challenges. We always have this. We did have some things going on with projects going on, water sewer. You did mention again, pursuing grants for some of the work that's going to be done. Well, the water tower is one of those. But works that's already begun, the ground reservoir, of course, well, once they got in there, found a few other odds and ends of things that we didn't know from a diver. So I mean, we're learning all kinds of new things. The headworks project, minor adjustments there, but that these are projects actually even the groundwater storage was several years ago. These are not expansion projects. These are improvement projects. These are projects that we had to complete before we could even think of the expansion. So in 2023, we did a study to do the expansion and found about $5 million between the water and the wastewater plant that we had to do. We're getting them done, slow but sure. Now we are looking at expansion. Now we are starting the expansion project. Projects that are going on, obviously, the extension Hancock Drive, we found out that's going, but traffic signals might be a little late getting here. The completion of the project is not expected to be done until November, but the traffic signals, the construction of the Hancock Drive is going very smoothly and moving forward quickly. So the last hang up will be the traffic signals, which is expected in July. Hopefully before Reg Rye. Hopefully they're there working. So folks will all of a sudden you're going to have some new traffic signals down there. And we're not even talking the DOT's projects on roundabouts. Those are something they will handle. Yes. The roundabouts will be in 2027 and are all DOT bidding for the first street project. Again, that's going through the DOT as well. Yes, that has not happened. Not happened yet. Nope. Are we hoping to get it done here in a timely fashion? I'm sure hoping so. We were hoping for a July 1st start date. So very soon we definitely would have to move quickly on that. I know first street. That's the targeted one and as soon as we get that done. Other things that have been happening. No, really it's now getting into the busy construction time. Yeah. Yeah, we are, we've submitted almost all of our water projects to the DNR and that has been going through the review and we'll start our environmental review on that. The water tower just was approved by the FAA. So that canal moved forward. There was a bit of a height concern there so we've gotten that taken care of. Yeah, we have the North transmission main. That's a big one. Yeah. And then the force main, which is another big one and then the lift stations and then some smaller projects along with those. So those again, some of the things and part of, and again, that's part of the budget. Why the levy rate was kept the same was because some of that force main works, some of that sanitary sewer work that's coming up. We needed that carryover money to get it started before Daisy gets here and gets operational. Yeah, we are trying to reduce as much of the impact as we can. And one of those ways is obviously grants because those don't have to be repaid. The second way is looking at other ways of paying for these projects in a quicker manner that may not be directly related to sewer revenues or water revenues. I was going to say a lot of, I mean, it's very seldom you have a $2.1 million loan is going to be paid back in three years. So that should go fairly good. Yeah. So we're hoping anyway. Yeah. All right. I do know housing projects continue to go. We've got some new ones that are looking on. I got to ask you about, of course, the Bellucci's moving down there. That is part of it. People ask about the demolition and why it's taken so long. There was a timeframe to build something new, but that is up to the property owner. Yes. The city has an agreement or had an agreement with that property owner to demolish the old former Pizza Hut. And then the agreement was for that property owner to build something within 30 months. He did not. There was a penalty for that. So the city is kind of out of the ability to force him or them to do something. But definitely the site plan and they did approve that and looking forward to getting that space filled. Very excited to have a new restaurant here in town or a bigger restaurant for the same place. And we also have another demolition that's going on same kind of agreement. Yes. And it won't be long before the front's going to be down. Yes. That's on Keeler Street. And the exact same agreement happened with them is a demolition. The whole KWBG studio. Yeah. I have the pictures. And they will also have 30 months to rebuild. You got all of that happening. Nights on the green start this week, getting busy summer time coming up, got a lot of things that are going to be happening. Yeah. Make sure you go out there. It'll be a great night for the kids to be out there. There's a carnival and some other kid activities. So it'll be great. All right. Andrea, I'm going to start guest on the program today. Thanks for joining us. Thank you.