 Welcome, and good noon, Shabuigan. Did I nail it, Scott? Yeah, you did. All right. Will Darren have a battle? All right, all right, that's my applause to Scott and his weekly Friday announcements. All right, well, thank you guys for coming today. My name is Derek Mink. I'm the Transit and Parking Director for the City of Shabuigan. I am also on the Governmental Affairs Committee who puts on the First Friday Forum. So welcome, and thank you to the Elks Lodge for hosting us today and to Prevea Health for sponsoring our First Friday Forums. These are a great way for us to, I guess, continue to learn about Shabuigan County in these challenging and difficult times. So without further ado, this man needs no introduction, I've been told, but today we're going to hear from City Administrator Todd Wolfe and have some time after for some questions and answers. So please, warm chamber welcome to Todd Wolfe. Before we get started, we do have a reminder that once you guys are done, once you guys are done eating lunch, please wear your mask once you're complete. Thank you. Is it okay if I take my mask off while I'm talking? All right. We just want to make sure you guys can hear me. Pardon? You're concerned? Okay. All right. Well, thank you, everybody. Many of you guys know who I am, know a lot of you guys in business, and a lot of you just through interactions throughout the city. So again, I'm Todd Wolfe, the City of Shabuigan City Administrator. Thanks for inviting me. And I believe that you guys have basically put out the next four hours for me to talk, so I really appreciate that. Oh, I'm sorry. It's 45 minutes, not four hours, okay. My bad. So how many of you guys love to have lectures and presentations? Okay. All right. I totally agree with you. I was asked if I should bring a PowerPoint and I thought you guys are going to eat, you're going to sleep, and you're going to forget who I am. So I like to be interactive. So if you guys have questions, concerns, complaints, let Deidra know. So basically the overview is going to be my background schooling, my past careers, my past city involvement, and my present position and the vision of the city. And some city stats just to kind of bore you guys before I leave so you guys start to fall asleep and not ask questions at the end. So background. I'm a transplant. Don't hold it against me, and I'm proud of it. And I think it's great because of the fact that I bring an outside source and understanding of how things go outside the city of Sheboygan, outside our county, outside our community, because I've been to the other side per se. So I moved here as a disgruntled teenager back in the 80s, took to the 90s to get warm. I say that all the time because anybody that lived where I came from, even today is a cold day for me. So I'll never get out of that. So overall I've cross-pollinated as I call it. I love Sheboygan and I love Wisconsin. And we have so much to offer, and it's such a great community. It's a great environment to raise a family. So when I talk about, you know, live, work, and play, I'm serious about that. So when I moved here as a disgruntled teenager, one of the first things I said to my dad is, did we just go back in time? And I honestly, as a teenager, I was serious. You guys didn't even have cable yet. I was like, whoa. So anyway, moving forward, Tended North High, I think that kind of makes me a Sheboygan right now. I've basically gone through many positions within Sheboygan. I've worked in multiple companies. And part of my many jobs is my goal to add value to myself and to others. So over the years, I've been involved with many organizations. And I'm presently a board member for the Habitat for Humanity. And I've been involved with them for quite a long time. When people ask me about myself, I basically tell them I'm a Cinderella story. For those of you guys that know about Cinderella, she kind of worked hard. And then, okay, I'm not a princess. I'm not a kid. Last verse and foremost, let me explain that. It's more of the fact that I've worked hard and I'm blessed to be in the position that I am today. So I worked for local companies and climbed the ladder into management positions. And as we all know, when you climb the ladder, sometimes you slip on your way up. Sometimes you move up pretty quick. So I've worked for family companies. I've worked for corporate companies. And I've been very blessed with that. I've worked with companies during good times and bad. Many of you guys totally can understand that because we've been there together. So I've been through layoffs. I've been through growth. I've been through process improvements. I've been through customer changes, corporate changes. I've been through employee challenges. I've been through product development changes and on and on and on, just like all of you guys out there. So where does that bring us? So personal growth is very important to me. But helping others is also the, is bigger part of me as a person. So you will see that I'm honest, especially for those of you that know me. I'm honest and I'm straightforward. But I also like to work hard and play hard. No bungee jumping, no. So my schooling, I'm a non-traditional. I'll explain that. I started as a Wisconsin journeyman here in the city of Sheboygan. A lot of people don't even realize, well, what's that mean? So especially in today's day and age, how many journeymans do we have going through colleges and technical schools, right? So I attended Lakeshore Technical School at the time, college now. I attended UW-Sheboygan. I also finished up at UW-Stout, my alma mater. I have a bachelor's and a master's in industrial management and I'm certified in Lean Six Sigma for those of you guys that remember that. Still alive, it's still going. So I'm a black belt certified and it's a passion of mine. And it's not a martial arts. I've had multiple people at the city thought I was a karate expert. It's like, no. Part of the reason they thought I was a karate expert was the fact that I tend to walk really fast for those of you that know me. And all of a sudden, boop, there I am. So they thought something interesting was going on. So I've worked in manufacturing, the manufacturing world, locally and out of state. So my last career path was working for a local company called Kurt Joa Company that I'm sure you guys are familiar with, Nice Family Company. My career path started in mechanical engineering and I was promoted into project leadership. Now, for some of you guys that know the Kurt Joa Company, they are a manufacturing company of large machines, custom machines. So when we talk about project management, we're talking about 15, 20 million dollar machines all over the world. So it's quite unique and they're specialized. So when you say project management, project management is almost like doing what? Running a business, if you think about it. So you have income, you have costs, you have customers, they're always right, right? And you have to try to balance that and make it all work out and make sure that they're happy at the end of the project and stay on time and on schedule and on budget. So I worked with them and then I was promoted from engineering to project management. And in my last three plus years with Kurt Joa Company, I was promoted into business development. Now, as a side note, you guys will get a kick out of this because at the same time that this was happening, our city administrator in Cheboygan had presented his letter of retirement. So because of the pandemic and my background with the medical side of the industry, and we can all imagine what that means, right, for some of us, I became the lead business development manager for the Kurt Joa Company. So the irony is where I'm going is the Wednesday before I gave my letter of resignation, I received two awards and they had an award ceremony because I did over 90 million plus dollars in sales. In development, which was the highest that they had had in a five month period. And a lot of it's because of luck. It's because of how you foster and develop your customers. And it's also a lot of the situation that we're all in right now. And that's the COVID-19, right? So unfortunately, when you apply for a job that's a city job, what's the hardest thing about that? Not being in the paper. You can imagine that. So when you give your letter of resignation, but they already saw it in the paper, they kind of figured it out. So it's kind of funny. So anyway, where am I going? Past involvement, I've been with the city since 2011. And why? I'm a taxpayer just like you guys bought my first house at 21. I hate paying taxes. I still hate paying taxes. But I'm either part of the problem or part of the solution. So what do I do? I get involved. I got involved. I got involved on committees, commissions, and started understanding how the city works. The city is a company, if you think about it. So I was the past holder for the last five years. I was council president for four years. I was council vice president the year before that. Why does that matter? Because of the fact that it allowed me to work with our city administrator prior to me and understand what our challenges were, what our growth opportunities were, and try to help him see it from a business perspective. My predecessor didn't come from business. He came from Grafton, no offense. But he also came from a community that was much smaller. And he never had the challenges that we have as a city that's growing and that needs to grow. So having said that, I look at the changes in the growth of the last five years and I want you guys to understand that we've done over a half a billion dollars of growth. And we all in this room should be proud of that. We've had a lot of opportunities, a lot of development. We've been very lucky because the economy was doing great and then what happened? January happened, right? We had COVID. So fast forwarding today with all of the development, we had low unemployment, we had the development that I talked about, we had everything. We had rainbows and unicorns as I call it. It was just great things were happening, growth was happening, double digits, everything. COVID happened, so then we have to really kind of rewind. So for me, the new city administrator, I have obviously lost revenues, budget issues, COVID challenges, just like all of you. I have city unrest, we have nationwide unrest. We have development on hold and we have businesses in need of help. So that's what I see, you guys have to help me if my vision isn't so good. So what, what can we do? This is all about what, this is not just about what the city can do. But it's for us citizens, Sheboyganites, Wisconsinites working together. So let's circle back to the city. So July 7th I took office, I was hired, it's not a voted in position. So my boss is everyone in this room, my boss is everyone in the council, and my boss, besides my wife, that's probably the first one I should say. So we all have bosses. So my thoughts on the present vision, so, because everyone wants to know, what's your vision? If there's an optometrist out there, they know this isn't good. So my thoughts of the present vision is the vision is like a road and we will adjust it as the road and environment changes. There's two parts. There's internal and external. And being that my background is business and development and process improvement, we really need to look at it in two ways. We have the internal, the city, and we have the external, the community. Together, we have to work on both. So when I talk about the internal, excuse me, during this time of COVID, I'm looking to spend time on the internal focusing on the growth and development within the city. I've been digging into the city's departments and processes to assess our teams and develop and support positive growth and change. So a lot of us in this room have been family organizations, large corporations that are maybe multi-generational. We probably all understand that during times of growth, things tend to slide a little bit because everybody's kind of happy and moving forward and we're focusing on a different target than internally. So what happens? Companies tend to not improve on their internal processes because, like Lean, waste tends to hide things. Money tends to hide things. Margin tends to hide things. And it's only when things start to go south, when people start to internally work on things and reduce the waste because they need that margin to survive. So as a city, we're going to be focusing on a lot of internals. We're going to be looking at a lot of things besides training, growth, development, which I know we all talk about, but how many people actually invest in that? So we're going to be looking at things like that. We're going to be looking at technology because why? I believe in working smarter, not harder. It's amazing some of the things. And we look at the city, and the city should be one of the areas that we all look up to because that's a company that we all pay into. And it should be the most efficiently run organization for us to look at, and it's not. And I hate to say that, but it's not. So we have improvements just like every other company, but we need to work together on that. So part two of that is our city's past relationship and our view that has been fogged. And that's just my personal opinion, you guys can help change it. But this is an important portion as we look to improve the ability to help businesses large and small. Right now is perfect opportunity and example of how we need to help. As a city, as a community, working with our businesses that are local and within our county and abroad. I mean, and when I say abroad, I'm saying outside our county borders. Because technically we all work together. It might be from our material vendors, might be from our process vendors, might be from our internal resources, meaning our employees that live and work and play in communities outside Sheboygan and outside Sheboygan County. We need to help them understand what we need to do and what the vision is. Obviously we really want to see more business come here and develop. So we need to help those businesses. We are open for business and you're going to hear me say that more and more and more and more and more. We're open for business and change is coming, it's kind of my mantra. And why do I say that? Because if we're not growing, we're dying. And I've said that as a past holder, and it's just like any business. If you're not growing in margin, if you're not growing in sales, you're dying. And that's why product tends to change, right? The city is a company, as you've heard me say, and the city has to do what? We provide services. If we're not improving our services, reinventing our services and when I say improving, I'm meaning more efficient, the services become too costly, and then the constituents say, well, why am I paying these taxes for these poor services? So we need to rework them, we need to use technology, we need to use process improvement, and we need to find ways to work smarter, not harder. And I know I sound like a book, I sound like an infomercial. And if you guys would like, I can work with you later on that, but I'm joking. But these are things that are just common sense and just not common practice. So only together can we work through these times. So the vision of the city is the fact that we are a large company. How do I see things changing within the city? Along with my team, I want the city to be an employer of choice. We are one of the largest employers in the city, if you think about it. We're not selling insurance, we're not making cheese, we're not making brats, we're not making tubs and toilets and things like that. But we're making services. We're providing things that the city constituents need every day, day and night, 24 hours. So we need to do a better choice, a job of that. We need to communicate better. Like any company, our city doesn't communicate very well. And I've seen it. I've only been with the city three months, and believe it or not, I can see a lot of opportunities within our group. So involvement and participation, just like every other company. You work with your upper management, your middle management, your lower management. How often do they all work together? If you were actually to have an Olympics within your organization, how many people would actually get a gold, a silver or a bronze? They don't all work together. Teamwork is what's important, and we don't always see that. Whether it's in the city or outside the city. So lean, improvements in process review and technology. That's one of the things that I believe in because how many people right now are zooming? It's amazing, right? If we didn't have that technology in those tools, you'd be out of business, right? Think about that. Where were we? A couple of years ago, we still had the old city hall. The old city hall that we struggled every time I was out of the country, just to have me call in for a council meeting. That's archaic. And that's calling in with a phone. Now you look at today where we're using Zoom, we're using Teams, we're using all kinds of different communication techniques and abilities. Without these tools, companies are struggling, companies will fail. And we're not out of the woods yet. So again, technology, not just in technology like that, but technology on how to do the billing systems, how to do the transit systems, how to do our HR systems, how to do our financial systems. All of these technology tools are things that you guys are probably ahead of what the city is, so we need to work on that. But it doesn't just mean you're rolling out a new program. It means process improvements, process review. Jokingly, as a past alder, and when I first got involved with transit back in 2011, I complained about the fact that city government, and I wanted people to prove me wrong, would just take a budget, roll it over and add. But I wasn't far from the truth, and that's a sad situation. So we're changing things. Why are we changing things? Because now, I hate to say this. I guess I get what I, I opened up my big mouth, stuck my foot in it. Because now I'm the city administrator working with those budgets and those numbers and trying to figure out how we're gonna pay for all this stuff. So it's a good thing. So I already have a team that's working on being super users for our technology base. I already have a team that's gonna be working on lean improvements throughout the city. We're working, we're chipping things away. We're getting people involved, we're creating teamwork. So my leadership, I just wanna talk a little bit about that because some of you guys know me and some of you know me from my past management style. So I have five steps. Now I'm gonna start to sound like a politician again, right? I have five steps. The first three are cyclical. And hopefully you guys like these and agree with them and maybe you'll even implement them or think about them in your future. First one's coaching. We coach every day. Whether it's friends, family, maybe we try to coach our significant other. But we all know how that works. But coaching is what we do every day together. Friend to friend, worker to worker, co-worker to work, co-worker. It's basically giving those little tidbits of how to improve and how to do something a little bit better. That's the first one. Mentoring is where we basically, we work closer together. Maybe it's arm in arm. It's basically helping somebody understand the process a little bit better. Maybe they're struggling on understanding the whole scope, the whole process. But it's bringing them closer and working with them more as a teammate and improving them. A lot of times though, again, this is a three-step piece, you find out that that person doesn't have the skills, the knowledge, maybe the training. So what do we do? We give them the training. So it's coaching, mentoring, and training. That's cyclical. Why is it important? Because every day we should be doing coach mentor train throughout our community, throughout our city, throughout our business, throughout our friends and family and businesses. Because we're trying to do what we're trying to make them better. Because we're only as strong as our weakest link. So if we continue to work with people and make them better, you're adding value to them. It also means things are gonna be what? A lot more efficient, less problems, less complaints. People aren't working so hard. People are able to enjoy their jobs and their careers. Because they have other time to do other things. But all good things come to what? Step four, and that's discipline. We have to have that one, right? Because I call it a reboot. And believe it or not, and some of you know me, I've been written up before. I'm that guy. I pushed the edge. I was the guy that said, hey, I don't wanna do that. That doesn't make sense. But I hate to say it. If it's part of my job description, not purpose, but description. It's my responsibility. That's what I get paid for. That's what I'm supposed to do and do day in and day out. That's what I get reviewed on. That's where my goals are. And that's why you have to have what I call that reboot, and that's called discipline. And that's why it's stepped. Because nine out of 10 times, I've actually been able to take that team and get them to see the vision and mission and where we're going and why we need to go there and how we're gonna get there. And help them understand how important their position is within the company. That one out of 10 times though, I've helped that employee to understand that maybe this isn't a good fit. And that goes to step five. And that's dismissal. And I call that promoting to the exterior. And you guys can use that one. But the whole concept is by the time I get to that level on step five, the majority of the time the employee actually has moved on on their own because they've realized with a non-confrontational situation that this isn't the place for me. This isn't the job I thought it was gonna be. This isn't the career I thought it was gonna be. And they move on. It's not a bad thing. We've all had multiple jobs and we will continue to. And we have to understand it when one door closes, another door opens. And in some respect, multiple doors open and we have the ability to choose it. So again, the five steps are not to be disciplinary. They're to be growth and development because that's what we want. That's what we all should want is to make our employees better because those employees that are better make the company better, more successful, more profitable. And that's really what we need day in and day out, not just development. So that's my five steps. So I also wanted to talk about real quickly is our values within the city. And when we talk about our values, these are things that we take for granted and we're gonna be communicating them much, much more within the city because we have a mission, we have a vision, just like everybody in this room, right? Hopefully everybody knows about the mission and the vision, right? The mission is what we wanna do, the vision is where we wanna go kind of concept. But then what are the values? What are values? We all have values, especially in today's world. So the values, and I found these in the city on a wall and I thought, oh my God, we have values. Does anybody else know besides me? And seriously, it's a poster on the wall. And I was like, whoa, look at that, took a picture of it. I was like, so excited. So accountability, God, I can't wait to rub that one in. Respect, seriously, there's a lack of respect, just like every company. It's not a city issue, it's just a society issue, it's a culture issue, we need to work on that together. Fiscal responsibility, I think the city is one of the shining stars when it comes to fiscal responsibility, but we gotta communicate it to our constituents to let them understand what we do and what we struggle with to become fiscally responsible. Service, again, I don't think we provide adequate communication on service. Why? Because every day as an alder, I would get a call, why are the roads bad? Can you fix this? My neighbor's complaining, my neighbor's too loud. All the complaints, things that alders get to listen to. Innovation. Now that one we were lacking on, I will admit that. I'll give you an example just because you guys will love it. So in finance, we have a process, I won't even say what the process is, but we have four steps to this. We have paper, remember paper days? I thought those were gone. So we have paper, we have Excel, we have a program, IBMI, and then we have our ERP system which is called Tyler Munis. I have four areas that this process is being used in and it's like what? So if I ask for information, well, let me go check the paper. What? Well, let me go check the Excel sheet. Oh, what? Well, let me go check AS 400. Really? It should be one stop, one click, find it done next. We're not there. Teamwork, seriously, we've got great teams and we've got areas that just, they're just not running smooth, but every company has that problem. Every culture has that problem, so we need to work on that. And that comes with training, it comes with getting people involved. And I know how hard it is because I've been that guy in a plant, union, and I've worked union and non-union, just like you guys. Sometimes you have to ask yourself, why did I ask the question because I didn't want to hear what they told me. But we owe it to them because why? They are the ones that really hold the key to making us profitable or not profitable, successful or not successful. And I can tell you in my past life, working with the Kurt Joel company, when I would go to other countries and have to be there for the installation of a machine and the culture was a little bit behind Western civilization, if you can imagine. It's kind of like in you guys remember, hopefully you guys remember, I'm aging myself, the Flintstones and Jetsons. There are times when we sell the Jetsons machine to the Flintstones because we don't realize how lucky we are with the technology and skill set that we have in the United States. So again, it comes to participation and helping them be efficient. Anybody can have a state-of-the-art machine and run it and lose money. You can't fix that because that's a personnel issue. That's what you have to focus on. It's not always the machine. So having talked about our values, we're also looking at internal development and that's training and personal development within our employees and helping them become better. So the last one I wanted to kind of talk about real quickly before you guys fall asleep on me is some city stats. The reason why I wanted to throw that out there is I don't know how often you guys realize how big we are. And when we say how big we are, we say, well, but Todd, our population's just under 50,000, hopefully it ticks above that. How can we continue to just be at 50,000? Well, we also live in a world where everybody loves to drive. They're used to driving Milwaukee, they're used to driving to Madison. Everybody drives anywhere. So you can work anywhere, live anywhere and now, today, zoom anywhere, right? So we have to understand that we need to improve our community because we want people to live in Sheboygan. We want them to understand why we love to live, work and play here and why it's so good. Reason why I moved here as a kid, besides the fact I had to follow my dad, the schools were better. It was safer. It was cleaner. It was cheaper or cost effective depending on how you wanna look at it. So when you look at that, that's what we have to offer plus the beautiful lake. So city's value of 2019, 3,298,516,300. That's a big number. That's a big, big, big, big business when you think about it. A lot of assets, a lot of opportunities. Let's talk a little bit about our expenses because you guys run big businesses too. 2019 amended was $131 million plus. That's a big number. 2020 adopted was only 109. Some of that's borrowing, some of it's projects, some of it's what's going on within the city development. 2021, Todd, you lucky guy. What are you gonna do to make this better? So we're at proposed executive, which was just finalized this morning. Was $118 million. Again, we're trying to cut costs. We're trying to find ways. How can we make things better but still be conservative on our spending? So on a positive note, 2019, we had $9.4 million in new construction. In 2020, we had $84.5 million in new construction. That's all of you guys, that's everybody in the community. That's bringing other businesses in here. That's bringing development into the city. That's tax base. That's what helps us to survive because if we don't have development, if we don't have growth, then it costs the constituents, cost all of us taxpayers more money every day and that's not good. We need more development. We need more growth. So just on the last note, and I love this just because of the fact that people tend to forget because when they send us their taxes, they think that all that money is going to the city. 36% of that dollar goes to the city. 40% goes to schools. 21% goes to the county, not including the additional sales tax. 3% goes to the technical college. That's your dollar. So when you think of it, it's spread out. It's helping the community. It's not just the city. It's helping colleges. It's helping our school systems. And we need to remember that because it's not just going to one place. It's being spread out. So in closing, I just want to reiterate the fact that you're going to continue to hear me say Sheboygan is open for business. I would yell at like Derek, but I don't want to startle you guys. We are open for business. And as I've told every employee within the city of Sheboygan, change is coming and I'm here. So thank you. Let me know if you have any questions. I'm here all all day. So maybe if we take questions and then because we don't want to pass microphones around, if Todd, if you can repeat the question in the microphone so everyone can hear it better and then respond. I'll do my best. Sure. Thank you. I'll start. You talked about coming to Sheboygan, but you never said, you know, from where? I am from California. Don't hold it against me, but Ventura, California. Yeah, north of LA. So if you have LA County, then there's Ventura County. So I lived in California. I got to go to the beach every day. I got to have fun in the sun. And then I moved to Wisconsin. It's cold. It's cold. It's cold. Just digressing. I moved here. Like I said, I moved here in June as a young disgruntled teenager. My dad says, go down to the lake. It's just like the ocean, Todd. You'll enjoy it. Just go east. I didn't know my grandmother's address, but I went east. I went to the beach. Lot different. Went in the water. Seriously, that hurt. That hurt. So that's a joke. Right. Just more on facts and figures. You mentioned at the end when you were giving some stats. I think you said 3.9 in a billion or something like that? It's 3 billion, yes. That is total assets. Total value of the city. Sure, I'd love to. The city invested in 150 acres for South Point Business Park. We did that because the council and myself at that time, we had missed a few opportunities within the local industry where they were literally looking for more land, shovel ready as we call it. So basically ready to be developed. We didn't have enough in our old business park and we didn't wanna see good businesses having to go to other communities when we have so much to offer. And a lot of those businesses wanted to come to Sheboygan, but we just didn't have enough land. So we invested upwards of $15 million and built 150 acres of prime right off of High 43 Business Park for anybody to expand, grow in, Steve, and put some nice industry in there. Well, COVID obviously happened, sorry. So we had some opportunities that we were working on and developing through the SEDC and other groups. And basically a lot of that was just put on hold. They're basically saying, hey, we're still looking to grow, but the industry's changing. Things are kind of throttled down as I call it. It's not that it's not coming. It's just more of they're kind of riding out the wave right now, the COVID wave. So we do have a couple of small opportunities that we're looking at. So we're hoping to get something started, but some of that won't start until probably next year, just because it's already October and construction starts to get into, have issues with winter. We do have a development on the far south side of I believe it's a 133 single family residential. It'll be Stonebrook, I believe it's called. So that'll be a nice addition to the city. And I want to say in the near future, when the Aurora Hospital finally moves and out of the, into their new facility, that'll be a seven acre development opportunity in the heart of a really great neighborhood because I come from that area. And that'll be a great place to see some development, which is really needed in our city. We just, our city is a great, it's great, obviously, but we haven't had any land and housing development opportunities. Obviously the land to the east is a little moist and, you know. Are you suggesting that we might meet that development agreement? Yeah, it's already in the redevelopment agreement. Yes, young man. You can all see why I am and the rest of the city employees in the room are so excited about fatiguing this new position. And he's really hit the ground running and doing a great job. But while you've told us a little bit about your experiences and what your views of the city's future are, tell us a little bit about your hobbies type. My hobbies? Tell us when you're inviting us over for that factor. All right, for those of you that know me, obviously I love to do remodeling and things like that, but I also built in my backyard a 55 inch diameter wood fire pizza oven. I love to cook. So I'm a pretty good cook. So I did, I did like Chowdown and one first place this year. I was one of the three winners. And I've done men who cook. And again, it's because I love to cook and I love to give to the community. So as an example, digressing a little bit since Deirdre brought that up. When I was council president, the council president tends to take the council out once they're voted into the position. It's kind of just tradition. So since we had COVID, I decided that what I would do when everybody wants to go to Todd's house for pizza, I bought pizza boxes and we did 80 pizzas in three hours. I had numbers on the street that I'm on and people could order it and I would give them a time they'd pick from the menu and then we would run the pizzas out to their car so they could eat and go or pick up and go. So, yes, Reed. Armory, once that's down, is what focus are we gonna have on the A Street retail segment because once you get a bunch of people living downtown, what are we offering them to do? And I know we have some nice restaurants but we're gonna be losing some restaurants that have been here for quite a while. I know there's a lot of beauty shops that are other retailers basically closing their doors and stuff, it's a city house plan to encourage that development. If in fact we are getting the people that are filling up all these apartments, the ability. So, Reed, that was really good. You threw like half a dozen questions at me so I'm gonna try to hit all of them. If I miss one, please. And keep it in the bathroom. Sure. So, Reed asked about the apartments and the capacity. So, I did not come prepared to answer the capacity. We do have numbers on that. I will tell you that the majority of them are full or at like 80 plus percent of capacity. So then, the question there is, do we need more apartments? And there's a controversy on that. The city does have basically an outside source. Mike, I don't remember the name of it but we have a study being done to see about the housing market right now and how balanced it is. We are working on that as well as a parking study for our downtown. Again, the city has really seen a lot of development growth when it comes to the housing market and I think we're really good on that. We have the Oscar that's gonna be 200 plus or around 200 additional apartments with some of them being like three bedroom apartments which is good. You have the Badger Lofts coming online and they've already started filling those. So that's 100 plus apartments. So we have some large apartment complexes that are coming online. So we really don't see that market really taking off plus with COVID I don't see a lot of development coming. To answer your question as far as the armory that is coming down, if nobody noticed, there's two questions out there. What's the city gonna do and what's gonna happen with the property? Right now because of just the way things are going we'd like to kind of just see it kind of settle down, plant some grass and see what's coming. We have had multiple developers come to the city and ask what's going on. We will probably end up doing an RFP in the future but right now it's just let's get the building down, let's let everybody kind of mourn if you know what I mean and just kind of get past the fact that the armory is no longer. It's been a large controversy like other large projects within the community. So we do have some development opportunities and it'll go out for RFP I'm sure in the future because it is a prime, prime piece of real estate. What's it gonna turn into to ask to answer Reed's question? We don't know yet. Some people would like to see condos down there. Some people have said let's put a hotel down there. Some people have said let's put some more housing. We don't really know right now. It's too early in the process. To answer Reed's question as far as the downtown, what's the city doing with the downtown to help? We've actually had a couple of different programs out there through CDGB funding where we basically been and it's online, it's on our website, it's been sent out, it's been mailed out where businesses can get some additional assistance. It's not a lot of money, it's thousands of dollars but a lot of the businesses aren't reaching out. We've had a couple of businesses reach out and the reason I know this is I'm on the committee that reviews the approval and acceptance to providing it but they have to provide us with information. I hate to say it but how long have you been in business? Have you been in business for a couple of years? Are you making money? Are you losing money? They need to show that they've been in business and again a lot of these smaller companies just don't wanna go through the hassle and it's just filling out a paper of getting the money and we've had some ask for the money. There's also another program for development again through CDGB money funding and that's for upper apartments downtown and facade renovations and we've had a few businesses locally downtown that have tapped into that to receive some money. So again, we're trying to develop, we're trying to help them out. I know during COVID and it started out very slowly and I apologize for that but again, we tend to be more reactive than proactive but when COVID first hit and summer was happening the city did back down on some of the liquor license fees and some of the fees when it came to having outdoor dining and stuff like that and we really were trying to push a lot of businesses downtown to have outdoor activities and we even tried, I believe it was on, I think it was Thursdays where we closed down part of A Street and let them have kind of an open area and unfortunately it was just a couple of businesses that actually participated. It was very well attended and there was discussion and I don't want anybody that knows where I'm going with this from past mayors but we are not looking to close A Street down but the question was could we close it down because of COVID to allow more businesses to have more activity but we were looking at more of the ability for them to have outdoor seating, things like that just to kind of expand on it. With the travels that I've had in my career traveling to a lot all over the United States and abroad it's amazing how our downtown doesn't do more of that. Let's face it, our summer is two and a half months of decent weather, sit outside weather. I'm being kind of, I'm joking a little bit but we need to really help them and expand on that and be able to use that whether it's a relish downtown with kitchen utensils and things like that or a clothing store or some of our restaurants and bars and things like that. We need to allow businesses to thrive during these tough times. Did I answer all your questions? Pretty much. We were kind of asking there's a lot of vacancies even pre-COVID that we'd love to see in different and additional retailers and opportunities so as we have these apartments filled up and we've got the streets buzzing with people that they have more options and opportunities to shop local. Thank you Dieter, do you want me to repeat that question? No that's okay. Yeah. So the whole concept of bringing in additional businesses downtown, I can only say in the three months that I've been in this position that we want that, we need that and we're gonna do what we can to support it and help it. I mean let's face it, in January everything went sideways and upside down. So I have not seen anybody come forward that says, hey I wanna start a business and can you help me? I can tell you that between Mayor Mike and myself and my team or our team, we're gonna do everything we can to help them because we do need to grow it and we do need to make the downtown bigger and better. We talked about housing, done. We talked about the need for grocery store downtown and Stefano's looking at it and we have some other opportunities that might be happening. We're doing what we can, it's slow, it's tedious, it takes time, but we're also not a Madison, we're not a Milwaukee, we're not Chicago, so it takes a little bit longer. So, questions? One more. You're my favorite. Yeah, early in your commentary you used the term, you said there was some city unrest. Yes. That was the term you used. Did you explain on what you meant by that? City unrest can be defined in multiple ways depending on which department you're in, I guess would be another way to say it. There's city unrest inside the city, there's city unrest outside the city. So I'm gonna give you an example of city unrest outside the city and when I say outside the city I mean outside city hall, okay? Unrest means, as an example, the SEEDC and the county put out a, basically what is it, Joe? It's a resolution, yeah, thank you. A resolution, asking businesses, asking people to wear a mask all the time, okay? We the city and the county can't force people, okay? But the unrest became huge because people assumed that we were taking their rights away. That's unrest, okay? Unrest means people are not happy with a decision, even if it's a decision to be respectful, to be healthful, meaning healthy to everybody. As a business, you guys can stop people from going into your establishment because you can say, you know, kind of like no shirts, no shoes, no service. You can say no shirt, no shoes, no service, no mask, but you have that ability to say that. The city and the county can't do that. Now the county can be more forceful if things go sideways and continue to, but we don't have mask police. So the ordinance was basically asking people to be more respectful and band together between businesses and the city and the county and basically tell people they need to wear a mask. If you have a health issue, we don't wanna put somebody in a bad situation, right? But that's less than the norm. So now you have all of those people that are against it pushing the fact, well, I have a health issue because they just don't wanna comply. So that's city unrest. Internal unrest is more of the fact that we have, just like any company, we have departments that don't communicate and work and play well in the sandbox. Thank you. Reed? One last one. Sure. This deals with the annexation issue and... Sure, I've heard of it. Any update on where that... Well, the ball is in now? Yeah, so Reed's question was about, in regards to the Kohler golf course in the 254 acres, there has been an overturn on the portion of the land that the Kohler company or Kohler group was looking to swap with the Terry-Andre group. If everybody realizes there's some acreage that they wanted right off the main entrance so that when you turn left to go into the golf course, some of that land was owned by Terry-Andre to get to the land. So they were trying to do a swap with the property, give them land to have better access to their property. And that has basically failed in court. So they're still on a little bit of a hold. Mike, did you want to add to that? They said that you need to go through the full process now. And so that other court will be making a decision on this rather than taking it out before and just, you know, dismissing it. Any additional questions? Otherwise, I'll throw it back to Derek. One last one. The land on the, see, that would be to the north where Kohler has the new art preserve and all that. So on the other side of the railroad tracks or whatever. Is there a plan of that? Or was that also sold to Kohler or? The land, what land are you referencing, Reed? Well, the city bought it for a innovation district or whatever, but they sold a portion to Kohler for the Kohler Art Preserve or whatever they call it, extension of Indiana and sugar property. Okay, yeah, the sugar property. I don't know if it's a sugar property. No, that was actually a portion of that was, went to the Glacier, yeah, Glacier Lakes. So that's actually a preserve and actually has some real nice trails and things like that. I went on that. But it's a wetland area. It's a wetlands, yes? The city had looked at it for me. Right, right. So that's now a preserve. So that land is not developable, developable. To the east, Rogers bought a portion at the top of the hill across. My understanding is they bought everything. I can check into that, Steve, but I believe they bought everything. Yes. Yep. You know, Reed, actually a lot of questions. The nation within departments and businesses. Right, and families. Right? If I have questions, I call Steve, but. Make yourself at work or make your business. All right, well thank you everybody for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.