2024 budget approved

The first reading of the 2024 Hill City Budget Appropriation Ordinance took place at the rescheduled Hill City Common Council Meeting Tuesday, Aug. 22. 

The total budget for all funds and obligations came out at $3,244,655.02. It was balanced by means of finance from taxes, licenses and permits, intergovernmental revenue, miscellaneous revenue, enterprise operating revenue and other sources. 

After clarifying a few questions for the public, alderman Dale Householder said, “We do want the public to know that when we started this process back in July, we were approximately $390,000 short of balancing the budget from what we were asked and what the projected revenues would be. The council had a lot of tough decisions.” 

Householder said while it looks easy to make these decisions, the council agonizes over them.

“It is not an easy decision to deal with this amount of money and to do it diligently and to do it the best we can. I want to commend my council members because I think we did a really good job. We pared it down as neat as we could get it. And hopefully we’re going to see revenues proceed our projections,” Householder said. 

With this the council unanimously approved the first reading of the 2024 budget. Later on Aug. 28, the council approved the second reading of the budget. The budget can be found in the digital agenda packet for the meeting on hillci

tysd.com.

During public comment  Connie Wolters asked the council if anyone had researched the bid from J & J Asphalt Company presented at the last meeting by a resident of Sunset Creek. She suggested that there might be a state exception that would allow the council to bypass the required bid process so it could accept the bid and save money. 

Another resident of Lacey’s Court addressed the road situation saying, “We’ve been trying to get Deegan paved and Lacey’s Court paved for many, many years.” 

He said, “We had talks about having an engineer come out and spending $80,000. There’s no reason to do that. When you go out for bid, these contractors have their own engineers. They will engineer for you. 

“We have priorities. I know there’s water issues, there’s sewer issues and roads that need to be paved. And those are the three things that I think we need to look at and get these things done before the cost goes up so high.” 

The resident said the council had procrastinated on getting stuff done and asked that they not procrastinate on these issues. 

Since the bid in question was brought up during public comment at the last unofficial meeting, the council could not address it. This time Householder spoke on the topic saying when matters are brought  the council will try to address them at the next council meeting. 

According to Householder, the bid that was presented to the council was a copy of the bid that was attained during the settlement. The original requirement was to do two layers of asphalt in Sunset Creek. One layer got done, but the second one never did. The bid represents this.

“If you’ll look at the bid, it doesn’t have any engineering,” said Householder. “It says no engineering and staking. That will be done by others. It says all the excavation, backfill and compaction will be done by others. All the granular materials furnished and installed by others. All the testing by others and all the final grading to do the paving would be by others. It’s a very incomplete bid.” 

Householder said it would be a waste of taxpayer money to put another layer on that could fall apart three years later because of the spider cracking on the bottom layer. 

“If we don’t do the road right, then it’s not worth doing. It’s not wisely spending taxpayer money,” said Householder. 

Householder also said that by codified law there are several listed requirements regarding what the city is required to do in the bid process, including “Contracts shall be awarded by the use of competitive sealed bids with very few exceptions.”

On the matter of exceptions, Householder said Hill City does not qualify for the exceptions because it is not a hardship case or emergency. 

While it may be easier to get bids for projects as a business, Householder said. “Our hands are tied. It’s not just go out and get another bid or call someone up and say, ‘Hey, can you do this for this?’ It just doesn’t work that way. When I first got on the council, that was one of the things I was really disillusioned about.” 

On the topic of engineers, Householder said it is not fair to put out a bid unless “apples to apples” are being compared.

“You have to have an engineer come up and give specifications to begin with so everybody is bidding on the same thing. You can’t let four different companies bid with four different engineers coming up with plans. It’s not apples to apples,” said Householder. “I’m sorry, that’s just the way it is.” 

McMacken agreed saying, “We’re required to follow certain rules, and it’s frustrating. We’re all frustrated.”

On the topic of a city engineer, McMacken said he had put together 75 to 80 percent of the Request for Proposal (RFP) document, but there was more to build in it, specifically an engineer’s agreement.

To start, McMacken looked at state law to understand what authority the City of Hill City has and what mechanisms need to be established. There are not many state statutes regarding city engineers. Rather, a city can have a section of codified law outlining the purpose and job of a city engineer through an ordinance or through an engineer’s agreement which is a stand alone document specific to the engineer. 

Historically, McMacken said the city has not had an engineer’s agreement. A section of code does address the job, but it does not go into much detail. 

Alderwoman Lori Miner said she was for an engineer’s agreement and that “It would be much easier, should the need arise, to alter an engineer’s agreement than an ordinance. Certainly, I think we need to outline what our expectations are.”

Householder agreed saying, “I would move forward with that. The simple fact is that it’s easier to change than an ordinance because things change as we go down the road.”

Alderman Carl Doaty agreed with forming an engineer’s agreement as well saying, “I think it’s a good investment on the money we are spending on the work being provided.”

With this consensus, McMacken said he would work on that piece of the RFP. He also asked the council to think about whether it would like the engineer’s agreement to be done before the RFP goes out. 

“Is it important that that document be at our fingertips to show a prospective company what we’re looking at? Is it another tool in the toolbox or is that something that can come at a later date?” McMacken asked. 

Another piece of the RFP process is determining how to rank or assess someone’s education, work experience, projects or how they handle various things. McMacken asked where the council would like to fall in place on a spectrum from individually assessing engineers to having a set criteria to assess engineers.

“We have an objective way to determine whether or not we would accept a bid so I think we need to do the same thing with an engineer or an engineering firm,” Miner said. “Never having to hire an engineering firm, I don’t know the criteria, but somehow I think we have to be able to defend why we selected someone or a couple people or a couple firms for final interviews.”

“In hiring employees in the past, that’s kind of what I’ve always done is set a rather focused area that I want to achieve and then get a scoring mechanism to that,” said Householder. “It gives you, as Lori said, a definitive criteria of how you arrived at that selection.” 

Doaty agreed that the council should come up with “some sort of standardized matrix that helps put everybody on the same field.” While he did not know what that would look like, Doaty thought between the four council members and McMacken they could come up with something pretty good. 

McMacken said his goal was to get the RFP document in a good format by the end of the month so the council could move forward with it together. Once ready, McMacken said the city attorney should look at the RFP. 

“This could be a three- month process,” said McMacken. “I know that sounds like a long time, but when you factor in deadlines, and time for them to prep the work and submit it in, and ask questions, and have a pre-conversation, and make sure that everything is fair, and then we narrow it down through whatever assessment or criteria analysis and then get it down to the top two.

“It’s going to take a while. There’s a lot of back and forth. But I’m, thinking around three months is probably a good time frame that we should be able to fit this in before the end of the year.”

In other news, the council approved the outdoor sound permit requested by James Ann Barlean and Vicki Barlean. They will host a fundraiser for the Hill City Ambulance at Gypsy Rose Studio & Gallery Saturday, Sept. 2 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. with live music outside in the patio area.

Additionally, the council approved the 2023 Hill City Rangers Homecoming Parade, which will take place Friday, Sept. 22 at 1 p.m. 

The next regularly scheduled Hill City Common Council meeting took place Aug. 28.