Ondrea Elmquist, Boone City Administrator, March 25, 2026

On our program today, we are visiting with Andrea Almquist, Boone City Administrator. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Here we are. What else is happening? We're almost to the end of March. We had a blizzard. We had all of a sudden all kinds of heat.

And we don't know. It's just Mother Nature doing what she does here. We do have a lot of things that are happening. And I want to go first of all to the one that's more people are probably going to, well, it's going to create a lot of issues for people.

And that is what is the council going to do this afternoon? They are going to be talking about citywide cleanup. Kind of came up at the last council meeting. And this, we heard it before over the last couple of years. They've done some restrictions on it, some changes on it.

But it was a program started 15 years ago. I don't, they want to know, should we make some changes or shouldn't we? It's not your call. It's their call. It is not my call. It was a program that was started by our previous mayor, two mayors ago, Mayor Slit.

And last year we limited it to what I would say is a mattress size or one bucket load. And unfortunately that did leave. And we had this issue in the past too, is that it leaves things sitting on the curbs for a long period of time.

That requires additional work out of our community service officer to go around and get property owners to pick up at the stuff that was left remaining.

And it puts a toll on our public works staff in that when they are doing that for those two weeks, nothing else is getting done. Pot holes are not getting filled, water main breaks.

We're getting those emergency things done, but the concrete is being left unrepaired along with multiple other things that they could be doing that they're not doing during that two weeks. So question is, what will they do?

And the council has had a variety of different things they've talked about. They said, do we take a year off? Bagbry in particular this year has them looking at, we have a few other things we could do. But do they do this? Most people become pretty accustomed to it.

The question is, are they becoming too accustomed to it? Because we know from the landfill side, why are we continuing to do the same thing over and over? Yeah, we appreciate the landfill waving and the supervisors waving a certain amount of tonnage each year for us.

Unfortunately, we do exceed that. And they have increased that over the years. But unfortunately, this was supposed to be something that was to help property owners clean their properties. And it's become more than the properties that we're picking up.

We're cleaning up things from their basements. We know that people are bringing things from outside of our community to get the stuff picked up for free.

So we need to figure out a solution that still allows for our citizens to be able to have a way to remove the things that they don't have a way to get to the landfill or to reduce that cost burden for them. But yet at the same time, making it feasible for the city.

So see what they decide. The debate will be among the council members and then we'll see what they end up with. We'll work from that from there. It depends what they do. That's how we get it done one way or the other. Let's take a look at a couple other things coming up.

First of all, you do have your public hearing on your tax levy rate. We touched on this last time. Your rate going to stay unchanged. You do have, again, a carryover, a short term, again, on your wastewater treatment for some of the projects going on there.

It's going to be like a three year loan, a very short loan, but it does keep your levy rate unchanged. Yeah.

So what we did is we left our levy rate unchanged and we used the additional revenue that comes from growth, comes from assessed value increases to do a short term loan for $2.1 million and that will reduce the amount that we need the sewer receipts to pay for.

This is for sewer improvements. So these are things that have to be done. They're not quality of life items. They are things to make sure that the toilets keep flushing in a sense.

And again, you do have some pretty substantial work that is going to begin now, again, because of Daisy. Yeah. So we do have the, on the sewer side, we have the lift station and the force main. We are looking at about $11 million in wastewater projects for fiscal year 2027.

Yes, I'd said, folks. Water big time there in water. Yes. See both sides. Yes. Several million dollars worth. Yeah. For fiscal year 27 on the water side, we're looking at about 5 million. Now that's not the full project cost.

That is just what we're looking at for fiscal year 2027. Just for the next fiscal year. There we go. That does keep everything a little busy.

By the way, when we talk about like the force main and stuff, the wastewater going in, we knew the lift station was going to be done anyway. It actually had started even before. Yeah. And we knew that was going to be done.

The issue came when Daisy decided to locate here was, now do we need to upsize it, which we ended up, that was the engineering recommendation. And I think you're pretty pleased with even going beyond capacity.

I think the council is too, going beyond what was just needed for Daisy, but to allow for future development and growth. Yeah. If you're going to do the work, you need to at least account for some growth in addition to what you're planning.

We are still limited on the growth that we can do. So we do, we only got so much space and stuff. Yes. What's going on? A lot of that happening. Let's see some of the, well on the water side, we know we've talked about that from last time.

But again, that's a project that continues to move forward. So I think everything else is, we're just plugging along. Yeah. Most of what we're doing on the water and wastewater side for the expansion side is a lot of the design work.

We do hope that the construction will begin in the fall. When you have, and again, part of what's going on with your budget and stuff, which will be coming up as well in April, people get the chance to do that.

The levy rate is just the one part of it, the actual budget itself, expenditures. Again, we have usual, we've got a lot of employees. Basically the biggest chunk of ours is employees.

Obviously you buy new equipment and things like that, but a lot of that are capital expenditures, capital purchases and stuff. But still employees, roughly about 80%, 75%. Yeah. You know, we have 65 full-time employees. Majority of those are in emergency services.

And unfortunately those are things that you really don't want to reduce because that does reduce our services and protection of our community. That was one of the campaign issues was all about the fire department and having more firefighters there.

So, and you've been working on that in the budget. Yeah, Council went ahead during our work session for the budget, went ahead and approved to move forward with filling the fourth person on each shift at 100% of the time with part-time staff.

So that was an increase in our expenditures to do that. And again, a lot of that comes out of that general fund part of the budget. It is, yep. You sent by her both funded completely out of general fund and trust an agency for the benefits.

Council did make an adjustment, or you did actually made an adjustment in the budget because of questions that were raised about the economic development funding, economic development and taking some out of trust and agency and stuff.

That was a decision or that was actually put in place several years ago when we got to that point. It did fit or it fit or there's a discussion back and forth on whether that should have been done or not. Yeah. I'm not an attorney and I'm not a CPA.

And I certainly, you know, when you talk state code and even city code, it's written by lawyers. And so it can be, it's not black and white all the time. And so the money that was being budgeted out of trust and agency was for benefits for the Ames Regional Alliance.

So it can be argued both ways that it was for benefits. And so therefore I understand where they were or we were taking that money out of the trust and agency.

If there's ever any question, if something's not right, you're going to see that I am very black and white that hey, if there's any question, we shouldn't be doing it.

So we did make some changes to the economic development general fund budget to accommodate that extra $40,000 out of there versus taking it out of trust and agency. When people would say, well, and then the council was asked, do you want to reimburse that line item?

It was a five to one vote. They decided no, not at this time. So it's not that they won't, but at this time they didn't. Only because you got some pretty substantial things coming up where you may need some additional resources. Yeah.

And the thing with trust and agency is that if it comes up short, other funds have to cover that anyways.

So there have been different solutions over the years when that has come up short, whether we use road use money to cover the benefits of the public works department or the general fund to cover the different shortages.

That trust and agency fund does cover several different benefits. It's not just health insurance and dental premiums. There's a bunch there. They go in a lot, some of the retirement stuff. Again, state law. Yep.

And what you did that said, yeah, now we're going to take all your police and fire and it's coming into the state and now you have to reimburse the state and they tell you how much. Correct. That's how that part works. Yeah. Not always the easiest part.

And speaking of insurance, I'm pretty sure I don't know if you've heard, but your property insurance, how's that holding? Because that's been just like people at home seeing that big insurance increase on their homes. You have massive amounts of insurance increases on the cities.

Yeah. That will be on our April 6th council agenda. We're looking at about a 3% increase on that. So this year we actually got a little bit of a break. Yay. Yeah. Try to keep that. We appreciate having those. Try to contain that.

There were a couple of years, yeah, that one, the library in particular was one. Do you replace the structure or do you do something a little different? Yeah. And that was a decision the council made back then was we can't afford a $13 million or whatever it was premium thing.

Yep. So, yeah, in the past years we have seen as high as 25%, 30% increases on particular line items in our liability insurance. Last year I ran into a situation and found that we had a very, very high deductible on some of our properties.

And at that time I recommended and council approved setting aside funds to cover those situations where we may run into a catastrophic event on those properties so that we have the funds to cover that deductible. Trying to keep that set available. Yeah. Have those reserves. Yep.

And it just helps with those premiums because then we can keep those deductibles higher, but still having ourselves protected. All right. Well, we did have this week, couple of different things. Obviously fairway expansion. We like to see the growth going on.

It's outside the city limits at that point or at this point right now, but pretty sizable commitment to staying here, being the part of the community. Yeah. Fairway has been a great partner with the city. They are out in the county.

However, about 50% of their employees live within Boone. So we want to make sure that we can accommodate and we keep bringing those employees in and entice them to live here. So again, that was a nice improvement there. And then of course we had our regbrives stuff going on. Yes.

I'm guessing at some point there will be a request coming forward, which is part of why the council didn't want to do some reimbursement with some of their available general fund dollars. That might be available to assist with regbrives.

I know you've got several of the council members tied in with it for doing things. And again, it's a big part for the community. Yeah. We are expecting them to be at our April 6th council meeting to discuss what their request is and what support that they need. Okay.

We'll see how that goes. Once again, council decision. They turn to you and go, can we afford it? Yes. I will help them providing the information that they need to be able to make that educated decision.

So now that we're getting through the budget time stuff, your new finance officer got to ask because she's been working a lot on the budget and things like that now? She has not. I have continued to do the budget just because we were sharing with her with Gilbert. Yep.

She will start with the budget amendment for this year on the budget side. Okay. Plenty to do. Yeah. And learn.

But she's familiar with doing, again, having been with Gilbert, the kinds of economic development actually working with economic development because Gilbert also works with Ames Regional Economic Alliance too. So working with the same people. Yep. Yep.

She should be able to pick up right where I leave off. She just got trained on our projects yesterday and how the funding works on those. So I look forward to her taking some of my duties away. All right. Well, we'll see how much will you, are you willing to give up?

I mean, you spent a lot of years working on the finance side. So is it that hard to step away or do you keep looking at it?

Well, I think that that's the benefit of having that background in finance as a city administrator that I can sit there and look at it and help her see something that she may not see as somebody that looks at it day in and day out.

Sometimes you don't see what other options, you know. It's so easy to say, oh, well, this is how we've always done it. So this is why we're going to do it for the next 15 years.

And having that background, but not looking at it every single day, I can come in and be like, well, what about doing it this way? Well, we've got, besides economic development type things, just our regular everyday operations.

We know obviously, first street, that's going to be a big project. I think waiting for the bids on that, I'm not sure if they've happened yet or will be soon. But the DOT is actually doing the bidding on that. Yes. It will be two different projects though.

One is using swap funding, which is federal dollars. And then there are some streets that did not qualify for that. So those will have to be under the city. But we expect construction to start in July. Okay. And try to get it done before school starts? Yes. Okay.

I think one of the things on the infrastructure side for that, again, people always talk about just the surface of the roads, but I know the public works side of it, they are more concerned that intersections, intake, storm intakes, and things like that, they want to keep water moving.

Correct. So those are, you're going to see a lot of that going on too. This is a big project in a residential area, so it will cause disruption. Just hang in there. It'll be done. And when it's done, you'll be happy. It is. It's inconvenient for a while.

But at the same time, we also know that there are still a lot of people say you need to do more with streets. And already, we do have other targeted projects. Lynn Street in particular is going to be one. That'll be coming up. I don't know if there's others.

Well, you still have the extension of Hancock that's going on too. Yep. That one is starting construction again. So we're hoping to have the concrete all done by the end of May, and then traffic signals and all that up by hopefully the school start also.

We did last time when we had visited, I asked about Daisy when you said they would be going vertical pretty soon. We got beams going up. We got beams going up. Big, it is really, that was a lot of concrete out there. It is. That's a lot. It is.

But moving forward, what other, oh, I know I was going to ask you because the park commission had mentioned it, and I just got, I saw the notice just came out about some hearings coming up in April or opportunities in April. They have been doing a 10-year plan.

The council had asked for this, a 10-year plan, basically a comprehensive plan for our city parks. Where would you like to see improvements, changes, things like that? So they've been working on putting that together. Now they want some public input on it.

And it is important, public do go to some of these meetings they have coming up.

They're going to be in April and they've got like a morning and an evening, a couple of different times, but they want public to come in and take a look at what they've been talking about and see if there are other ideas and thoughts in there. Yeah, definitely go give your input.

I know one of the questions that they're looking at asking is, how do you guys want to fund these projects? I am not aware of exactly what projects they're looking at because this is a park commission. And I don't oversee the parks.

But I think it is an important amenity within our community. And we need to not only look at what we want to do to grow it, but we also need to look at how do we maintain what we have.

We did talk a little bit about that, some of the big issues you've got, old infrastructure and maintaining that. I know that the Public Works has been doing a lot of sewer lining and then we ran into the issues where one of the contractors was not good.

Unfortunately, several communities discovered that. But so we've had some repairs that have had to be done along those lines. Still moving forward with a lot of that. Yes, at the last council meeting we just approved I think about a $180,000 pay request.

That was for the most current sewer lining. We did run into a situation where a sewer lining that we did a few years ago did not hold up and it did collapse the sewer.

So we've gone in, we prepared it, we did a little proactive work in hammering the remaining sewer line in that same area and we don't have any concerns there. Okay, so still have these issues. Yes. We're going to take care of it, keep it flowing and that's a big thing.

Other things, what are the things coming up for us outside of the budget hearings and the levy rate hearing coming up? Otherwise, we're just getting ready for all our spring activity and work. Yeah, a lot of construction's happening.

We got some site plans coming up on April P&Z meeting, planning and zoning meeting agenda and then those will go to the council for approval. Some of those will be herb park estates and then...

That's going to be the new Hunsucker edition that they are looking at doing and behind Cap Irby in that area. Well we're by the middle school. That one is projected to be 49 lots for single family homes. I don't have a price point for that at this time.

I think that they're working with a couple different developers to fill those lots. We do have, I mean, part of what the city does have some great opportunities again for those that are looking at building. We've had them for some time, Jump Start Boone and things like that.

There are a number of opportunities that people can use and some of these developers have been making use of those. It was like they've been there for a long time but nobody really realized that, you know, the city can help you with this.

We have a couple different housing programs. We have the housing incentive which is $10,000. If it is one custom home you build or have somebody build it or if it is a spec home that $10,000 is split between the developer and the homeowner, the purchaser.

And then we have the Jump Start Boone like you mentioned and that is on a residential home on the first $75,000 you get 100% tax abatement on the new home.

If it is an existing home though you can also remodel it, put some work into it and you can also get that tax abatement on the first $75,000 of the improvements. And we did have a lengthy list that qualified last year.

So yeah on the residential side and there is a commercial benefit there too is if you're doing something commercially you can get three years, 100% on that same type of thing. So if it's a new one it's a higher percent on those improvements.

If it's a remodel it would be on 100% of the improvements that you did to the existing building. You can get more information by going out to www.boomgov.com and it's right there on the homepage under programs. There are several different programs out there.

I really highly encourage you if you're looking at doing something to do that. And if you have any questions, make contact. Reach out City Hall or Brenda Dreier at Ames Regional Alliance can also help you.

I was going to say, speaking of the website, yes you are starting that process. We've got to get somebody fairly soon because end of the year basically the company that's been providing service for you is not going to be able to do it anymore.

We have been frantically looking for a new web host and designer. I'm hoping to be able to bring a recommendation to the council by the second meeting in April.

I'm finishing up, me and the City Clerk are finishing up doing demos at the end of March and then we'll take that to the department heads for final recommendation. Actually had one from Ames actually came to the last meeting and made a presentation.

I didn't know if they were on your list or not. They were not. They are not. They are now. Andrea Elmquist, our guest on our program. Thanks for joining us. Thank you.