2026-10-19 - City Council Work Session

It's October 19th, 2026. It's five 30 PM and we, I am welcoming you to the Billings, Montana city council work session. Um, I'm going to call this meeting to order and open the meeting up to public

comment on all items. This time is set aside for the public to speak to the city council. We will listen as council members, but we will not respond. We won't ask questions or discuss comments during

this time. Questions or concerns needing a response should be directed to city staff after the meeting. There will also be time in conjunction with each agenda item for public comment relating to that

item. Please remember folks, the rule is you may only speak once for each item during the meeting. So I am now opening the, uh, the meeting up for public comment. Hello, my name is Lane Dorsey. I live

in Billings. Um, I'm here with the, I'm here with the Billings Alliance for Immigrant Rights. Um, and we're here to demand a sanctuary city. Um, a little over two months ago, two families were

targeted by federal immigration agents in Billings. Can you stop your side talk and listen? Are you, are you listening or what are you doing? Thank you. Um, two families were targeted by federal

immigration agents. And when we came here to bring that up, we were, uh, not listened to Scott Aspen Lighter and Bill Kennedy both walked out of the meeting before it was over. Yeah. Not even denying

it. That's shameful. And we were threatened by a white supremacist. Do you remember that Mike Nelson? Did you see that? Did you see what he was holding a target practice page around me and every

member of bear, every concerned community member, and you said nothing. Yet you have a lot to say when we come out here and we express our first amendment, right. And we stand up for our community

members because you won't do it. You will not stand up and it's shameful. It's really disgusting. Are you going to walk out against Scott Aspen Lighter? Do you have anything to say? Do you condemn the

actions of that man who threatened our group? Anybody, anybody? Euler? Nothing. You don't contend. You don't, you don't condemn threats of violence and intimidation against us. Okay. So we're going to

continue demanding a sanctuary city because it is, we need to end collaboration between BPD, any local law enforcement with ICE or border patrol, it's absolutely shameful that members of council

pretend like they have no power to do anything, that everything has to be under the radar and that you can't do anything or say anything about it because why? Because you might lose your seat. There's

more important things in life than a pretty little seat. Okay. Families are getting torn apart and sent to concentration camps. Treat it with the seriousness that it deserves. I'm going to use the

rest of my time. Do you condemn threats of violence? Mike Nelson, Scott Aspen Lighter, Bill Kennedy, who is sleeping right now. Thank you for your time. I'm using my first amendment rights. I'm not

out of order. Next, please. Mindy Nielsen. I live in the Heights and I've told you guys this before. Thank you very much for serving. I really do mean that I am a 33 year, but I'm not a veteran.

Sorry. I worked for the post office for 33 years, 40 years. I've been a member of American postal workers union. Um, I'm going to start with something. I'm wanting to come back and talk to you guys

about, this is a book written up from on the County. I was born in, in Northeastern Montana, Sheridan County. It's the red corner, the rise and fall of communism in Northeastern Montana. Berlin Stoner

wrote it. I have things to hand out. So you guys can see the USB, um, the information I need. Think you need to be educated. Somebody in our group had a hat R F S O and it was a social. It's a

socialist organization. You allowed speaking out of turn, you allowed another member of the community to very disparagingly talk about that person that happened to have a cap on that was red R F S O.

You don't treat people like that. They have mega hats. Did it have to get to this point in the country before people started questioning the mega hats? We saw a sticker that said, uh, Trump and, uh,

Putin on the same one. Who's, who is, who's the leader of our country? Common communist gasoline is what I'm joking about with my friends about. So anyway, I really want to take you to task for doing

that. That was, that was really out of line. So if you're going to do it, do it fairly. And like the officer up front, that's what I've done. I've told him this afternoon, you're going to do it, do it

fairly. Whatever he's coming to us about, it better be done with other groups because we know a lot of other groups. Then there I, there's a total breakdown of local state and federal issues in this

country, in this state, especially postal employees. Like I said, it was a member and I still go to union meetings. I still pay dues have been manipulated up and down, uh, Supreme court, no Supreme

court, Trump, whoever else wants to pick at that establishment that was made for and created for the U S citizens, just like national parks. They elite want to go and buy a part of just like the trees

that are being cut down in DC for Trump's, whatever his newest, newest adventure of tearing down public property. Thank you. Next. My name is Ellis Tilley and five 9 1 0 1. Uh, I wasn't here for that

council meeting, but the fact that you, Scott and bill walked out of the city council meeting, do you understand that this is your job, did you work hard to get elected to sit in that chair? Remember

like back in, back in kindergarten, I don't know if you have kids or if they still talk to you, but, uh, you would have nap time, right? Have we circled back to where you're old enough? You need nap

time again during public comment instead of doing your job. And you know, I do respect you. Oh, I would like to reclaim my time. I do respect your refusal to condemn violent and threatening rhetoric

that took place in here because silence is part of your first amendment, right. A freedom of speech. And I will exercise that as well. How many sheep are we at bill? Mike, can we get a, can we get a

sheep tally? Thank you. Hello. My name is Andreas story. I live in a word five. Um, and I want to start by saying that the way that you guys are using this seat as public servants is disheartening. It

is really sad. Um, bear has been coming to you for months on end talking about legitimate concerns within our community, uh, legitimate concerns we've been seeing all over the country. And this

council would rather just sit there and do nothing. It's, it's depressing to watch, um, your refusal to listen to your constituents, um, as Ellis pointed out, it, it's disheartening. It really is,

it's, it's sad to watch. Um, and it's also funny to listen to members of council talk about how public common is a time for us to talk in them to listen. And then every time Bill Kennedy gets his

feelings hurt, he decides to speak up. It's, uh, it's really, it's interesting how that works when there's rules for, you know, us, of course. And then, you know, something that happens pushes Bill

Kennedy over the edge because we're talking about legitimate concerns and are frustrated that that how those haven't been met in any meaningful way ever, and, uh, then, then it's time to speak up,

right? That that's, that's a good time. Not when children and families are being kidnapped in your community. No, but when your feelings get hurt because we're a little angry that that hasn't been

addressed, that's when we're going to speak up. I just, I really want you to think about that. There were two families coming home from a backpack rally, getting ready for the school year. We came to

you to address that concern and Bill Kennedy was mad that we were using, uh, angry language about two families being kidnapped and taken to a detention facility. That's depressing. That's infuriating.

This all happens after we, a bear has reached out to you guys with emails and they were left unanswered. And we wanted to set up a meeting to talk about our demands. Like we were told to, we're, we're

still waiting. Still hasn't happened. When is this body going to address the legitimate concerns about ice and border patrol in our community rather than police our language? And then when a man

threatens us, we do nothing. I would love if anybody on this council could offer a reason for why, how that, why that's how we're acting. It's depressing and it's horrific. Good evening, mayor and

city council members. My name is Jeff Kettleson. I live in the fifth ward. I specifically would like to make some comments concerning the sale last week of Lampan, Lampan park citizens of buildings,

10 years ago and buildings. There was only one census tract that was low income housing. 10 years later, there's eight census tracks that are now low income housing. 10 years ago, that worked out to

be about 3000 people today. It's 30,000. I did a calc, I used a calculator online and I couldn't believe it. I still don't believe it. That's a 700% increase of low income people in the city of

buildings. And what does that really mean? Well, that means that we're struggling here. We're really struggling. Your previous administration, that happened under mayor Cole. You can thank him for

that and some of these council members. So what does the city do when they can't get revenue from you? You vote down referendums all the time because you can't afford it. Now, what they do under the

previous administration, Mayor Coley sold off a couple of parking lots to some connected individuals. This administration, what they did was they sold off a giant size park, park land that your kids

played on. Now they didn't want to spend any money on it to put a playground, but that's OK. They say you don't deserve it. So they come after your children. But more distinguish this out of control

is the way they sold it. They had three beds come in. Every single bid was the same amount of money. Thank you, Council Member Kennedy, for bringing that up. And then one was notified. Hey, raise it

up just a little bit. You'll get it. Don, from CNR Builders, you got screwed. The citizens got screwed. Mr. Aspen letter, he was the biggest proponent of it. Thank you. You screwed us again. Sorry,

you could one shopping can only speak once. Is that you, Miss Nelson? New topic. No, only one safety topic. I want to know only once there's a nice police officers in this room. There's another gun, a

concealed and carry gun. The man with the turquoise shirt often acts like he does when I watch your meetings and I'm trying to there's another public comment period at the end of the meeting, you can

speak again or if anybody else in here has a concealed carry gun, anybody else for public comment? Miss Nelson, please sit down and let us conduct our meeting. Paul Clark, Ward One, Mr. Mayor, Council

Members, City Administration, we the people. I really don't have anything to say other than I guess I got called out on having a weapon. Last time I checked, there's Mr. Clark, second and then third

minute. I'm sorry. You can speak to the council. You can speak to us on issues about the city, but you're not here to pick a fight with somebody. Oh, OK, well, somehow I got brought to my attention as

I walked in. And you guys, enough of the clicking. That's out what here. You know that. OK, go ahead, Mr. Clark. OK, well, let's go back to the subject then. It seems like the sugar factory wants to

fire up and I can smell just about everything that they're cooking lately. I can tell the difference between brown sugar and molasses. Today was molasses. Now you can only imagine how frustrating you

all smell when you leave this building. Maybe you live farther out west where you don't have to have put up with that. Or maybe you live out on the other side of the river. But down there in Ward one,

we can tell the difference. And again, I think I can come up with a solution if I could just get someone from maybe Ward one, maybe Ward five to take a visit to the Western sugar factory and suggest

that the limestone that's in the back is a super fun, bad site. It's been that way for 60 years. If we can take that limestone field and put it back in the field, it seems like it would be proper. I

did do a research on that and it is feasible. These trucks that leave with empty trailers, go back to the next point. How hard would it be to load up that trailer and take it back to Huntley upon the

Clark's Fork, wherever these fields are at and reintroduce it back into the soil? That's my only suggestion. Maybe someone would listen. I'll come up here every week. I don't know what this group was

about, but I can only imagine I've seen them in the past, Mr. Clark and don't talk about people here. You can talk about issues with us, but you're not here. I'm going to tell you, I live at Ward one.

God bless, Miss Nelson. This is your last warning for outbursts. This is your last warning for an outburst. We all ask you where you live. That's enough. Now you're more than welcome to sit here or

you can be quiet. You want to take this out in the hallway and and deal with it, Miss Nelson? I gave you your last warning. Mayor, I move that we take a recess. All right, we're going to take a quick

recess while we calm down. All right, recess has concluded. If there's any more public comment, we'd be happy to hear it within the rules of decorum. Seeing none, I'm going to close the public comment

session and we will move on to item number one, fiscal year twenty twenty eight technology replacement program. Good evening, Mayor Council. Thank you for the opportunity to present to you tonight.

I'd like to introduce you to Steve Gilbert, the tech or the IT manager for the city of Billings. He has worked with the committee and he's going to be presenting to you the TRP for twenty twenty

eight. And we will answer any questions after your after Steve's presentation. Thank you, Steve, for all your hard work. And also, could you move the microphone closer to your mouth so that you can

hear you? There we go. Good evening, Mayor and members of Council. So over the past month, I've worked with each department to review technology assets that are nearing the end of their useful life

and identifying assets that are in need of replacement. So these assets include things like laptops, desktop, PCs, audio, visual equipment, tablets and other types of IT related assets. This

collaborative process allows us to prioritize our technology purchases. So tonight we're beginning the process of seeking your guidance. And once you've had the time to review all the materials and

submit your feedback, we'll reconvene and seek your final approval. And once we receive that, each department will be well informed as they draft their fiscal year twenty twenty eight budgets. I'd

first like to talk about some of the challenges we faced in creating this year's plan. By far, the biggest challenge we face is the rising price of hardware that we've experienced over the last couple

of years. There's a few factors that are contributing to this. The first, the demand for hardware to power artificial intelligence has caused component costs to rise very significantly. Then there's

tariffs and supply chain disruptions that have also had a significant impact on prices. This has had a really pronounced impact on some of the more specialized equipment that we use around the city. A

good example, you see a picture of it. It's the Panasonic Toughbooks that's used by the police department. These are really rugged laptops. They're more durable than your standard consumer grade

electronic. Not too long ago, you could purchase one of those for around forty four hundred dollars. You replace the same thing today. You're looking at about sixty six hundred dollars, a 50 percent

increase per unit. Another great example, those Microsoft services like the ones that council members are issued to conduct city business not long ago, those were around twenty four hundred dollars a

piece. To buy a similarly similarly specced one today, you're looking at about four thousand dollars, so it's increased by about two thirds. So there's price issues. And then the other issue that we

face or challenge is making sure that our IT infrastructure is right size for our organization's needs. Those of you who were present during last year's T.R.P. presentation, you might recall that we

were projecting a really large spike in fiscal year twenty eight. A big a big reason for that is that we had over four hundred thousand dollars in servers that support our virtual environment slated

to be replaced. So these are our servers that host our virtual machines, as well as our storage or SAN servers, as they're called. And servers that support our backups. Now, you're probably aware that

we're planning on moving to a cloud based public safety platform within the next year. This is going to have a pretty significant impact on the IT infrastructure footprint, if you will, that our

organization requires. So I worked with our network administrator and our system administrator and we decided that we should probably hold off on those purchases for a year. We want to really

understand the full impact of the new Tyler system if we do go that route and and see what impact it's going to have on our infrastructure needs. That's what being right sized is. It's really about

it's, you know, making sure we're buying what we need, not replacing some expensive equipment just because of an arbitrary replacement date. So with those challenges in mind, let's take a look at our

request for fiscal year twenty twenty eight. So the total request is one million one hundred and four thousand four hundred and eighty dollars that actually represents a very modest one point eight

percent increase over our request from fiscal year twenty seven. Since the airport is going to become its own authority, I thought it might be constructive to sort of break down that cost between

airports and the rest of the city. So the real big top line numbers to look at are for the city eight hundred and fifty four thousand eight hundred and eighty dollars. And then for the airport, two

hundred and forty nine thousand six hundred dollars. If the current plan, as it's drafted right now, were to be approved, we would be replacing approximately two hundred and twenty five assets. Most

of those assets are devices that our employees use every single day. So we have eighty six desktop PCs, eighty six laptops, twelve tablets, seventeen surfaces, and the rest of the assets being

replaced are primarily servers, network switches and other technology equipment. In total, four hundred and seventy four thousand of it is capital expenses of ten thousand dollars or more. And six

hundred and thirty thousand four hundred and eighty is operations and maintenance or O&M. If you look at that table over on the right, where I've broken out airport from the rest of the city, you'll

see that approximately three quarters of the city's request is O&M. Whereas the airport is almost entirely capital. So what does the airport plan on doing with that two hundred and forty seven

thousand in capital expenditures? They have three major investments that they're planning to make. The first pertains to their radio system and base station used out in the airfield and inside the

terminal. The current system is frequently failing and it can no longer be upgraded. And it's absolutely essential to the airport's operations. Next, they're going to be investing seventy thousand

dollars to replace a video storage server for their security system at the terminal. And lastly, they're spending twenty thousand dollars to upgrade the flight information display system or F.I.D.S.

that gives passengers information about departures and arrivals. If you look up at that pie chart in the top right, I've broken down the request by department. If we set airport aside for a second and

look at the rest of the city, you'll notice that there are two departments that basically make up two thirds of the rest of that pie. The biggest is Public Works at over three hundred thousand

dollars. And that's because they're replacing six servers over at water quality, as well as a gas chromatograph for analyzing samples. Police comes in second at, I believe, around two hundred fifty

five thousand dollars, and that's because they're replacing 40 of those Panasonic tough books I mentioned earlier. Being good stewards of the city's money, police has opted not to replace the docks

that are still functioning for those MDT's. So that saves about around a thousand dollars per unit. Library came in third at around ninety one thousand dollars. And that includes a capital expense for

a new file server. So what does the trend look like over time and where are we headed? So this chart shows the TRP amounts for going back to fiscal year twenty six. And then we're projecting out to

twenty thirty one for years twenty twenty eight through twenty thirty one, I once again broke out airport in the rest of the city. So once again, you can see that from twenty seven to twenty eight,

it's a very, very modest increase. You might be a little concerned with that one point six five million that we're showing for fiscal year twenty nine. Pretty much all of that increase can be

explained with two things. The first is the virtual environment servers that I mentioned earlier. We might not have to replace all four hundred and forty thousand of those assets once we implement the

new Tyler solution and go cloud based with public safety. Also, I'll mention that part of that fiscal year twenty twenty nine is over one hundred thousand dollars in network switches. We're currently

sitting on a stockpile of those. We have spares. So it's very likely we're not going to need to replace one hundred thousand dollars in switches in fiscal year twenty nine. Going over to fiscal year

twenty thirty, once again, over two hundred thousand of that is network switches. And again, I don't think that we're going to have to make that type of investment at that time for that type of

equipment. And then when we get to twenty thirty one, we see that the city's portion is back to around where it is for fiscal year twenty twenty eight. I'll mention that these projections for twenty

twenty nine through twenty thirty one come from what's currently in our asset management system asset tiger. You know, every year we're, of course, going to review these numbers and not purchase more

than what we need. Lastly, I'd like to just thank all the stakeholders in each department who helped us go through over a million dollars in assets. This year, it's a huge undertaking. I'd especially

like to thank Rachel Goralia and Damon Combs and I.T. I was told to keep it to five slides. So we'll turn it over to Council for any questions. Thank you. I didn't count. Is that exactly five? It's

five. Congratulations. You you've passed. We have questions for our presenter, Mr. Boyett and Mr. Lindley. Thank you, Mayor. For the public at large, the PC doesn't wear out. The laptop doesn't wear

out. It still sits in the same place it did. You bought it two or three or four or five years ago. Why are we replacing equipment that hasn't been broken, stepped on, thrown on the floor, but still

sitting on the desk the way it was some years ago? Well, for one, I would say that older equipment leads to a lot more help desk tickets for our PC support teams. Applications just don't run as well

as they used to on older equipment. And just for the record, we typically advise four or five year replacement cycles for our PCs and laptops. Jeff, did you have anything you wanted to add to that?

No, other than it's also important to stay on top of computing as things age out and we have more advancing technology. It's important that we replace computers so they function under the current what

we have currently for technology and not like it was three or four years ago. One follow up, Mr. Boyett. Do we do we recycle these at all? Can we get any money out of these even though they're still

functioning? Can we give them to charity or can we do something with them rather than put them in the garbage is what I'm trying to say? That's a great question. I know that recently we started

contracting with Yellowstone waste to make sure that stuff like old police equipment is securely disposed of old hard drives and stuff and incinerated. I don't know if I don't know if we've

historically ever taken part in any sort of, I guess, donation. We currently destroy all of our computers, and most of that is because a good chunk of our computers potentially have sieges or siegen

material on them. And we work with a local company so that we witness that the hard drives are destroyed, we just want to make sure that all that BII and any sieges information is completely gone so

that that's the way we work. Things we don't try to recycle or get back money by selling computers once they're retired, Mr. Lindley, then Mr. O'Donnell. Thanks, Mayor. First of all, I just want to

say great, great plan. A couple of things on the replacement schedule. And I had noticed on the spreadsheet that there were machines from 2022 or even potential bit earlier, which is honestly, I would

say is good if you've got a good plan to keep getting as much life as you can out of those to the extent that you can keep them running without those additional help test tickets, as you mentioned.

But I just would say I applaud you for and the team for making sure that you're being good stewards, as you said, which I think you certainly are to well, first question, which is when you probably

need to answer here more of a follow up for after the meeting, I'd love to see a little bit more detail on that O&M bucket. So that was something that we could talk about after that. My main or after

the meeting, maybe later this week or something would be great to get some more detail. My main question is, I think your your plan to not replace the server hardware right now and and and wait a

little bit to see what the impact of the new software is a great idea. Are you also when you get to the point where you're going to look and see what your plan is for the replacement, are you going to

be looking at not just replacing the VM hosts, but also potentially looking at what the difference in cost would be if you just truly move to cloud hosting, say through Microsoft or other cloud

hosting, so the servers are just running in that cloud environment instead of in a in an environment that we purchase and own. That's certainly an option that we're willing to entertain. Yes. And I

know it's a it's a it's all a question of money. So seeing what that looks like over like a five year period is probably going to be most important. Right. Yeah, I was actually talking to our network

admin earlier today about possibly going away from our from our VM ware subscription. Thanks. Appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. O'Donnell questions for a presenter. Thank you. You know, I'm curious as to

the nature of the relationship between the ongoing relationship between the city of Billings and the airport. I was under the impression that we were severing ties to them. But you have a significant

amount of money going to the airport in the 2031 budget. Can you please explain the relations, ongoing relationship between the two entities? I think the my reason for including that was more academic

really than anything else. I mean, it's not going to be part of our it is it is a foregone conclusion that it's going to happen at this point. I don't know if that's really a good answer, but we're

not it's not going to be part of our planning process in 2031. Thank you. One one second question had to do with as Commissioner Lindley is talking about the O&M costs. Does that have to do with the

annual subscriptions for the software programs? No, we historically were at least over the last couple of years. I've only been here a couple of years myself. We didn't have a perfectly standardized

way of doing the TRP when it came to software purchases. You would see sometimes software purchases included for, you know, maybe the airport or some other department. But I can assure you that not

all of the software purchases that it's responsible for in the TRP. So what I did was I standardized it and we're looking only at actual physical infrastructure. There's no software in there. Thank

you. Mr. Nice. Thank you. I'll try to keep this short and you guys can get back to me later. But because you brought up the issues with our council laptops we bring, I would like to know, I've got to

notice I have to replace mine and it works just fine. And so those are the things where I'm wondering how we why we replace them that soon when they're still up to date and software and stuff like

that. But you can get back to me on that. If we can save a little bit of money by extending our our laptops, that'd be great. But the other thing you brought up because of the these these police

laptops are becoming so expensive. I brought this up before and I'm wondering if you looked into it again and this mobile data terminals, these MDTs and how they utilize just basically the dumb

terminal connected to cloud on their smartphones. Have you guys been looking into this? Is this a solution to get rid of those expensive laptops and just go through the cloud system? Or is it still

not feasible yet? And again, you can get back to me on that. I just would like to know if we're actively pursuing this technology because the other departments are using it and and the cost appears to

be lower other than your cost, which we're going to. Anyway, so I'll leave you guys answer that at another time. Sure. I'll just say that I know police has evaluated or at least started the evaluation

process of moving to iPads rather than the sixty six hundred dollar MDTs. And I know Jeff's done some research about large departments across the country that have successfully transitioned to tablets

in the patrol cars. I'm not prepared to make a recommendation today for PD. But I know that conversation is definitely being had. All right. Any other questions? Good. Yeah, if I could just add some

clarification on the O&M. It's a function largely of our capitalization threshold. So the city would capitalize assets that are ten thousand dollars or more. And so all those computers are on items,

not capital. So that's why the O&M is so large. Personal computers end up getting categorized there. OK, anything else for a presenter? All right. Seeing none, have a seat per second. We're going to

open this up to public comment on the technology replacement plan. Would anybody like to come up and talk about how the city is going to replace this technology only? Please step forward. Good

evening, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Jeff Kettleson. I live in the Fifth Ward. I think that Commissioner Councilmember O'Donnell brought up an excellent point that needs to have more

discussion. The airport will be the airport is going to become its own separate entity. And I think that the airport should be put on notice that our our help from the city is going to be ending. I

know that they're planning on using our servers in the in the immediate term because they don't have them. And and I believe that negotiations are under way as we speak for the rental of that, but,

you know, I was against getting rid of the airport, but it is what it is. So now that it's going to become its own separate entity, they should be put on notice no more. It's three hundred thousand

dollars, which isn't a lot, but it can be used in other areas in our in our city for our police department. So I would I would strongly suggest that we make a minimum investment in the airport to keep

it going because we need to have that but to tell them no more. Thank you. Any other comment on the technology replacement plan? Hello, again, my name is Andreas Story. I live in Ward five. I just

want to point out when the presenter was talking about the challenges that faced this bill, specifically, we brought up tariffs and supply chain disruptions. What do you think those come from? Sir, we

want your comments on the technology replacement. Yep. That was that was something he presented on. He talked about the challenges for the bill. Right. So those come from Trump's racist agenda, which

is affecting all of our comments are about my comments are about part of the challenges that this faced, which were tariffs and supply chain disruptions and the cost of technology going up due to AI.

We all we all recall that we know what that's from. That's from President Trump's racist agenda, which is affecting everybody right now, just like how we've been coming to city council talking about

how it's affecting immigrants. So I'm going to caution you before I cut you off. You could talk about the computer technology replacement plan. Nothing else. Yeah, I can see that Aspen letter doesn't

want me to talk about it. That's great. But the issue is is that this is something that's brought up in the challenges to the bill. Again, we all remember, right? Aspen letter, do you remember thumbs

up, thumbs down? I mean, were you paying attention that time thinking about leaving or looking to Mike Nelson again? OK, that's great. This was something brought up in the bill. And I want to make

sure everybody remembers that and remembers why that happened, remembers why we're here. Ellis Tillery 5 9 1 0 1 to my friend's point. There are things that we can do to combat or at least denounce

what is making our costs go up as a city. We could sanction and make sure that the city is not doing business with any AI companies or data center construction. Point of order, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, you

have a question later. You can talk about the FY 28 technology replacement plan and the city's computers. This is this is relevant. No, it's not. It's up to me to decide and I've decided it's not. So

please take your three minutes and talk about the fiscal year twenty twenty eight technology replacement plan for the city. Why are we babying the police departments with these fancy laptops? Point of

order. I think he's OK on this one. Go ahead and talk about the city's laptops. It seems like kids are pretty OK with their cheap Chromebooks and they don't break them all the time, right? Why do we

need a fancy rugged laptop for the cops? I think they're they're professionals and they know how to use software, right? They don't need new intuitive software because they're dumb. And if they are,

then they can learn it. I don't see why we need to buy these expensive laptops. And before we give more money to the airport, we give people a reason to come here. I think there's better ways to spend

that money. Also, what are we doing to ensure that our move to cloud based software will not have us so well when the A.I. bubble pops? Do we have a contract with a company that will likely go out of

business? Mindy Nelson from the Heights, Ms. Nelson. Yes, you're going to need to put your sign down, please. Oh, OK, well, everybody else has brought a sign up. Does this bother you? No, ma'am. I

couldn't see your face. OK, does it bother anybody else, shouldn't it? Point of order. So I'm going to remind you that you're here to speak about the fiscal year 2028 technology replacement plan for

the city of Billing. I'm not as well educated as I call them kids back there. I'm sixty two. So I really don't know if I have that much, but they had made good points. They made very good point.

Pretty smart for point of order. Eighteen. What would you like to say, Miss Nelson? I'm saying it right there. Then you'll need to sit down. You're here to talk about the technology place replacement

plan next. No, I've still got forty five seconds. Everybody else was quiet. I'll try to be quiet if you can survive the sign. There's a point of order. It's up to three minutes. I mean, do we just sit

here for in silence for two minutes? Is that something that's appropriate? Certainly does not seem appropriate to me. I mean, if you don't have an active comment, you don't get the full three minutes

to just sit with a sign at the podium. That's not the intent of public comment. The intent of public comment is to make the comments ever. I did, but I'm sixty two. So that was a while ago. Not sure

if you've taken out. don't know communism socialism in Montana. I'd suggest we recess Mayor is my time done yet. Not yet. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Here's a rule. You can speak to the FY 28 technology

replacement plan. If you decide to sit there in silence. We'll ask you to sit back down. My name is Lane Dorsey. I live in Billings. Yeah, technology is pretty important, especially for kids in

school. It's important for them to learn about it. Um, I have a few things to say about it. Let's see the city of Billings technology replacement plan provides a systematic multi year approach to

replacing aging technology equipment across city departments. The program supports operational continuity, cyber security, fiscal responsibility and timely replacement of equipment while avoiding

unnecessary or premature expenditures. Anything else? The proposed FY 2028 TRP identifies approximately $1,104,480 in plan technology replacements consisting of $474,000 in capital expenditures and

$630,480 in operations and maintenance O and M expenditures. The plan encompasses desktop computers, laptops, tablets, servers, network infrastructure and specialized departmental technology. I'm

talking about the agenda item. So keep your comments to yourself. It's my turn to give a comment. All right, that's enough. That's disruptive and rude. And we please have this guy sit down. We're

gonna go to a recess parliamentarian. I'd like to see you. Okay. So we're gonna come back and ask for a motion on this. We don't really need a motion. We've just heard it. It says no council election.

Okay. All right, folks, welcome back. Um, let's see. I think the council is not asked of any formal action at this work session. And I think we've heard the technology replacement plan. We're good. So

thank you very much. We'll move on to item number two fiscal year 28 equipment replacement plan. Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Nick Westberg with the Fleet Services and I'm here to

present our FY 28 equipment replacement plan. So there are currently 12 ERP committee members. Each member basically represents their own department. There are a few members such as myself who

represent more than one department. Um, so ERP overview. What is the ERP? The ERP is a mechanism to replace and fund the city's equipment equipment with a useful life of three years or more and a

value of $10,000 or more. The ERP is based on a 20 year plan. And in this plan we establish guidelines for review consideration based on mileage or hours and the age of the equipment. Those guidelines

for review consideration are in page six of your book. I believe it's the last page in section one. We further establish replacement costs and salvage values and the funding is consistent through

annual contributions. There are provisions for additional or upgraded equipment known as supplemental budget requests. Okay, equipment transfers. So just because a piece of equipment is eligible for

replacement or has been approved for replacement doesn't mean that it leaves our fleet entirely. We try very hard to transfer pieces of equipment from one department to another. Here's just a couple

of some transfers that would happen. Deferred replacement equipment and replacements. So at the beginning of this process we started with 142 pieces of equipment eligible for replacement. Throughout

this process we were able to defer 70 which leaves 72 recommended for replacement. Of these 70 deferred pieces of equipment, these are pieces of equipment that meet our standards and minimum

guidelines but the committee has determined there is still useful life of this equipment and they still ensure safety in the staff that operates them. Therefore they are being deferred to future year

ERPs. FY 28 replacement summary. This is basically a mere image of section two of your book. Section two of your book does break it down by departments even further. As you can see on the left hand

side we have the departments that participated in this year's ERP. To the right of that would be the plan and then we have our SBRs and then the total city funding. Replacement by department. This

graph never seems to change. Solid waste is always the big spender followed by street and traffic, Belknap, fire, parks, so on and so forth. Equipment replacement plan. So this is basically our five

year plan. As you can see this year it's around 9.6. The next three years are consistent at 15 and then in 2032 we do have a lower ERP year. One thing to note is I believe it was council member Neese

last year asked us if we would defer out equipment more than one year. The way that ERP was structured departments were deferring equipment out one year. And what it was doing is it was making the

next year look like a very large ERP. So we did take that suggestion and that's why you see this next three years is about even. So that was a good suggestion. Thank you council member Neese. Right

governmental fund replacement. So this is the department's basically our general fund departments. These are the departments that pay into the ERP police, fire, parks, so as we can see here the

horizontal the blue horizontal line is the funding and then our red vertical line would be the replacements. This graph looks pretty good. One thing I always like to show the council that is in 2036

2037 and 2038 there is a pretty good little spike there. That is due from the fire department. They do have around four or five fire trucks. They're eligible for replacement right around there. The

non-governmental so this is our departments that do not pay into the ERP. So this would be our enterprise accounts such as fleet, parks, building. There is no horizontal line because there is no

funding just the vertical line showing the replacements and everything there looks about normal and that's it. That's our FY2080 ERP. Thank you Mr. Westberg. Are there any questions for our presenter?

Mr. Boyett first. Thank you mayor. Years ago when you had a surplus piece of equipment that wasn't usable anymore you would take it to an auction and sell it but apparently now we're doing it a

different way and it's actually better. Can you explain how we're getting rid of some of this equipment? Absolutely. Thank you for that question. So in previous years we did use the Billings public

auto auction. Craig Gould he's a great guy to deal with is what we found is public surplus is who we started going with. They are a national online auction. They cast such a wider web I guess probably

about 95% of our equipment that we sell with them does not sell in Montana. It sells either in another country or it goes to a different state and we have we do very well with public surplus. I'll

just put it that way. Some of the stuff that we have sold with them is very good. And then the thing I'm I like about them most all is they do not charge the seller. They only charge the buyer whereas

our local auction lots they do charge the seller 10 or 11 percent. So that's one reason. Thank you. Any other questions for presenter Mr. Pittman. This is a question and a comment. We started this it

kind of started it was supposed to manage the budget so that we didn't have huge spikes. So are we still identifying reserves that money is being saved up for these plans of replacement. So I guess

I'm going to defer that to my money man over here. The answer is yes. This plan has now been operating for 20 two or three years. It's it's worked really really well. We through times of high

inflation like we've been experiencing lately. We don't always have enough saved up for replacement because we anticipate the replacement costs 15 years out but we have 80 or 90 percent of the

replacement cost set aside. So it's it's working really well. I think I would say it saves the city a lot of money doing this. We don't we don't finance vehicle purchases. We don't lease vehicles

because we have the ability to cash fund. Any questions on zoom. All right. Mr. Zeller can you set the timer for two minutes. Thank you. All right. I'm going to open this meeting up to the public or

comment on the billing's Montana fiscal year 2028 replacement plan. Oh sorry. Thank you. Hello. Oh perfect. Yeah. My name is Andrea story. I live in Ward 5. I just wanted to talk to you guys about

some of the things I learned from that presentation. It took some notes during it. I'm just worried that two minutes might not be enough but I guess that's not a concern right now. So I heard that

solid waste is a is one of the bigger spenders which is interesting to me. Apparently the equipment replacement plan for the physical year 2028 is going to be nine point six million dollars. That's

another new thing I learned. And then let's see also found out about the surplus equipment. I found that specifically very interesting how surplus equipment we used to sell it in billings at an auto

auction. Apparently a guy who runs it's a pretty solid dude. And then now it's like at a national auction that apparently is done online which seems it seems like it has its pros and cons. So there

are probably some benefits to it with being able to pull in a little bit more money reach a few more markets but also you know I immediately wonder about if we're kind of taking some of our stuff out

of the city what effect that has on like local buyers local sellers how they dealt with maybe losing that much of a market. So I wonder if that's something we took into consideration like would it be

better to keep these in the community or you know this auction in the community despite the you know 10 12 percent that the they charge the seller. Yeah it's something to think about. I also found out

that this plan has been going on for 22 to 23 years if I heard right and that it helps with the times of high inflation which as we identified we're in one right now which is another interesting thing

that connects to a few other issues. I think man I wish I had another minute. Hello my name is Lane Dorsey I live in Billings. I have two minutes. I used to have three but now we have two. Okay. So

I'll make this really fast. Yeah in 2000 that's before I was born the city developed an equipment replacement program to monitor and plan for all equipment replacement in the city all vehicles and non

stationery equipment with a useful life of greater than three years and a cost of 10,000. Or more is included in the plan. So so things that are less than $10,000 are not included in the plan. Okay.

Um fiscal effects the FY. Oh I'm down to a minute already. The fiscal year 28 ERP replacements total eleven point nine million dollars. So we're replacing a lot of vehicles right like that. I looked

through a big list and there's like Ford fusions and see. Yeah. Ford F two fifties. I imagine some of those are going to be used by the Billings Police Department. Do they have any intention of

lending that equipment to ice or border patrol. I don't think that should be in the budget. I don't think we should be using our money to aid and a bet people who are kidnapping our community members.

Um but yeah really interesting topic. Let's see. Oh I just have seven seconds left. Okay. Thank you. Next may I address you said if we had any questions we could address over there. May I inquire as

to why you placed a restriction on our speech was that was is there legal reasoning behind this because the United States Supreme Court held one of order. Here to talk about FY 28 equipment

replacement plan. Okay. Does the budget have a provision for removing people from city council meetings for addressed for using their Because I think I think that we've seen in this meeting that this

is a serious problem and the people come in here and they waste your guys's valuable time and I think that we should have a police budget to get people in here to drag people like me and my friends

out. I think do you can you guys get a contract with with that company that makes the glove. The can we spend money on that. Mr. Tilley here to speak about the fiscal year. I was wondering why the

slice on the pie chart. Why was the budget for the Mets so small. That concerns me. Billings is very car dependent city. Mr. Mayor have you ever taken the bus in buildings. I haven't because it

doesn't go anywhere that I want to go. I'd love to not have to drive my car. Good evening mayor and city council members. My name is Jeff Kettleson. I live in the fifth ward. Thank you very much for

your service. Citizens a building right now we're talking about the budget for next year and if you and if you start to dig into this you'll see cost for our fire department and also our police

department. It's cost to replace cars. For trucks what whatever our first responders use three weeks ago this city council passed an unbelievable impact fee. They call them system development fees for

our street and sewer department and write it about nine hundred thousand dollars of additional income. That's income that we taxpayers don't have to pay. It was it's going to be paid by developers and

real estate companies the people that are building all this new stuff around here. It's fair. Now I'd like to remind this council and the citizens of buildings that approximately three months ago

council member Nicholson brought up that we didn't have system development fees for our police and fire department. And even Mr Aspen lighter brought up that you know we got to be very careful and

don't put a lot of pressure on these people which I agree with them but he also at that time said you know he doesn't think they're there yet. So the point I'm trying to make in this two minutes

really I should get three. I don't understand why but the point that I'm trying to make is that it's time for system development fees for the police and fire department so we can give them the

equipment. They need to provide the services they do for us. Thank you very much. Thank you Mr. Kittleson. Anyone else. Mindy Nielsen. I live in the Billings Heights. I was born in Lintywood Montana.

I'd like to know why more people aren't here tonight discussing what we mainly came here to talk about why there are people under 26 behind me. They have their lives ahead of them have hope for this

country in this city. Ms. Nelson. It's amazing to me. Ms. Nelson if you could limit your comments to fiscal year 2028 equipment replacement plan and billing. OK. Thanks for the two minutes and serving

you guys. Seeing no other public comment I'm going to close that portion of this item. Council any direction or further questions regarding the equipment replacement plan for staff. All right. Seeing

none we're going to move to item number three and staff memo says that it's being presented by Kevin Eflin but I think I'd defer to Mr. Aspen later if you would. Sure. Thanks Mr. Merritt. I think at

this point the the initiative we've talked about it before we talked about it when it was introduced. It's pretty straightforward. This is a test run to tighten up our rules and put some time caps on

our meetings to assure that we're moving through the people's business efficiently. There's a three month time window here either through the end of the year or three months whatever comes first to

see how this works and if it works in a in a way that we can facilitate it going forward. The goal here is not to limit discussion conversations engagement with the public people presenting their

issues doing business with the city. It is to hold us accountable to operating in an efficient manner. Last couple of meetings have been great but the two months leading up to that we're not so great.

And this is this is something to test run to see if we can actually hold ourselves accountable to operating and functioning in a more efficient manner. This is going to take us having some control

over over ourselves as we as we talk and debate. It's also going to take staff shortening presentations and making sure that we're getting the pertinent information not all of the information that's

included in our packets that we read and prepare for that's posted publicly for everybody to to see there are outs built into this. You know a super majority of counsel can can vote to continue on

with the meeting and and get rid of the timeline if if we are moving in the right direction. This is something to try to hold hold ourselves accountable to conducting business frankly we we can do our

job in these windows if we choose to frankly we just don't and so the the statistics that that went out in the chambers meet the chambers council bulletin here today. We're pretty eye opening to me

Dan Brooks did a did an interesting job in looking back at the facts the number that stood out the most to me was over the last three years during work sessions we exceeded the proposed two hour cap

75% of the time for regular business meetings with a three hour cap we exceeded the we exceeded the cap the proposed cap a third of the time we are we are capable of of. Conducting business

efficiently and I argue that the fact that we don't minimizes public engagement people don't want to come here and sit here until 10 o'clock at night to have public comment the fact that we drag these

issues out I think discourages people from participating in this process not encourages it so. That's my proposal don't need to I don't think I need to elaborate it on it any more than that we've

talked about it a lot through the course of when this was was introduced okay thank you any questions or comments regarding the presentation Mr. Lindley. Thanks for a couple of questions I noticed

this appears to be a little different than your initial thought of coming back potentially the next day and that it's just an extension if we vote for it continuing that evening correct. That with a

super majority of counsel we can continue on that that evening by overriding the proposed cap as it can ask a question to see attorney is I assume that that's probably better from a structure

standpoint than potentially coming back the following day because of public meeting notice. For council member Lindley I think you're asking more of a policy question than you are illegal it's not

really a legal issue either way structuring it either way is legally acceptable okay it's more of up to you discretionary policy okay. Can I break in for a second would you answer that question

differently if it was asked to view as parliamentarian mayor that's that's a good question. That one that I am not prepared to answer right now without looking at Robert's rules close a little bit

more closely go ahead Mr boy yet or do you have a follow up Mr Lindley. What just one quick comment I guess my point in that was to say I think that the idea of extending the same evening in my

opinion is better than the idea of breaking until the next day I think from a from a public notice standpoint so anyway I appreciated that. All right Mr boy it oh I'm sorry Mr O'Donnell was next in

line then Mr boy it. Thank you let me connect right here thank you you know I've given this a lot of consideration and the assessment of Scott Aspen lighter that time has been wasted there people have

been grandstanding. It has escaped me I haven't seen that what I have heard is that people members of the Council discussing the issue asking questions I fully understand and I understood last year

when Mr Aspen lighter brought this up to the last Council that. His line of work in is very prone to decision making you have a building you know what to do it's very scientifically based within a

very fixed parameters I appreciate that I appreciate it very much whenever Scott. educates us on a particular issue I find it is his contributions to be greatly useful I noticed that that the concern

that I have with this particular initiative is that we would. It seems like what Scott wants is to be more of a decision making body rather than a deliberative body. I, as I said when Scott speaks

when every member of the Council of the Council speaks. I could give great consideration to everything that people have said and it's important to me, especially somebody who is learning the job that

Scott's been on the job for quite some time now and I'm afraid that we would be. Through this initiative, which I assume will pass that it will be the result will be a diminution of of intellectual

curiosity about things and people discussing. Their their particular points of view I my vote has been altered by things that intelligent thoughtful things that people have said, and I really

appreciate that, and I hope that the same goes through. That people regard me the same way but i'm concerned that the decision making ability of the Council focus on the Council would override the

deliberative function, which I think is necessary for good public policy, thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you, Mr Donald Mr boy at Mr pitman and Dr Nicholas thank you, Mayor I do appreciate that changing

to that we can extend it from the evening that we were there, but. The one concern I have is an affirmative vote of three fourths of the full Council we don't have a full Council here tonight, so one

person just has to leave and then we don't have a full Council, I think we could change that to majority of the people present at the Council meeting would be a better solution to that does that make

sense. Yeah, I think that's a fair correction and something that's probably fully intended when I put that together, but did not land that way, but yes, I would assume that it would be a super

majority of the of the voting members present at the meeting. Anything else for it is fitment. Thank you, Mayor Council, I understand the point behind this I didn't support it initially and and I

think we're we're getting towards the right direction that you want as far as. As some of the organization headed forward it was kind of one of the reasons at the at the beginning of this year I

propose that each of these these meetings just be a business meeting. Because then we don't have things building up and piling up and then all of a sudden we have 100 agenda items that we have to get

through and all of them have public comment. It allows us to address things a little more fluently I do appreciate that looking at this and amending our operation rules, I think I would like to see

this as a test run without officially. amending the rules to make us do this to see if we can do this just by putting some some guidelines and approaching this with let's try this and see if it needs

rules or if we can self regulate and I think that's important. I think I'll obviously from our experience in here tonight having a discussion on public comment and how long and what we're allowed to

speak on can have a huge effect on the length of a meeting and so we need to have that full conversation as well. I also believe that now that the land use is gone and we're not going to be dealing

with a lot of zoning I think if we look back at those meetings where exceeded those it was probably public comment on zoning issues. I really would would like us to rather than formally change

anything put the rails up and see how we do. Thank you, Mr Mayor think roberts rules already gives us the tools we need to keep control of the amount of time we spend in meetings I think limiting

questions would help some Council members have dominated time by asking question after question, we can limit debate if we so choose. And then I think another thing that takes up meeting time is that

some members feel they have to lecture or instruct the city staff from the dais, which is really not appropriate for an individual Council member to do so I think there's ways we can limit the amount

of time we spend up here without setting up new rules I think roberts rules gives us what we need so we just have to use them. Gary thank you, I appreciate the spirit of this initiative, I believe we

have the capacity to show restraint and discipline to keep these meetings in a timely manner. The one concern that has made itself known tonight is the capacity to eat up all of our time with without

any of our ability to rain it in. So my concern would be that if we limited ourselves and then we're faced with extensive public comment we may not have time to actually conduct business, which is

what we're here to do so that's my comment. Thank you, Mr Gary hey Mr O'Donnell you have your hand up did you want to get in line again because it's all your behind Mr. All right Councilmember nice.

Thank you, Mayor, as I'll point it now we're actually not even following the process there's not a motion on the table it's initiative was presented and then we're supposed to be asking questions, so

I do have some questions that America don't mind. Yes, okay, thank you, so let me get my questions up here, I think that. back to the parliamentary just quick question about the process of how this

may work, if we have a super majority and it's been changed a super majority present needs to approve to continue the business. If that super majority doesn't continue business, then what happens to

the items that are left on the agenda. For as far as public notice does that be redone I mean Can you explain to that what happens when the super majority does not approve going forward extending it.

Councilmember nice if the time limit had been reached for meeting and the members of Council did not extend the time of the meeting to conduct to conclude business, it would simply. carry over to the

next meeting or like the initiative initially proposed was to schedule the meeting for the next day, it would all depend on how you structured the rule, you can structure it in any way that you want

to so. Okay, so maybe I misunderstood this Scott maybe i'm sorry to you know. Let me ask got this about we were there was changed to say that we would carry on that night, but your does your

initiative also include to say included that night and the next day if if it's not approved that night. So let me let me see if I understand your question Councilman nice I what I think I heard you

ask was if a super majority fails to continue the meeting and we are at the CAP. The initiative what says that we would pick the meeting back up at noon the following day. Okay, so you still have that

option that if it doesn't super injury doesn't then it is scheduled so public notice okay just to make sure public notice. Was it impacted and it is in in there, am I correct them, then I read it, I

maybe misread this and apologize it did state that you have to approve. To continue if, in other words, they say they set the agenda it's three hours or yeah three hours and comes down to three hours

and you have to have an approval to continue of a super majority is that correct or correct. Okay, and so if you don't get the super majority you have to then you show up the next day to do your

business correct okay just wanted to clarify that and according what Gina said is but it's not going to impact our public notice, we can continue on the business all right. And then what you mentioned

this for three months, and this is again to Scott you mentioned for three months to try this out what's your goal of success on this. My goal would be to get us to operate within a reasonable

timeframe and conduct our business efficiently. I think it's it's finding a new way it's it's for Council to deliberate and make decisions more efficiently and effectively it's for us to operate

within the rules that currently exist and it's for staff to start to narrow narrow the presentations and and be more effective in the way that the information is presented. Primarily, frankly, I think

it's up to us to do our homework when we leading up to the meeting and come prepared with the questions questions answered that we can get answered by staff prior to the meeting. And then come here

and do the work, I mean we also have a series of subcommittees that we've created intended to do a good chunk of work and then bring these issues back to the Council to do work on some of these more

difficult conversations and difficult issues I think the budget and finance committee has has worked well for the most part in that our adoption of the city budget over the last three years has gotten

better and better and better because of that committee. And I think using those committees appropriately would also help and and making sure that as things come to us, we have properly vetted them

either through committees or or we've done our homework and then we act efficiently and effectively. That's my goal. Okay, so Mayor just a quick follow up on that. So the goal would be really to if

we're if we are have a three hour we finish in two and a half hours every night or three hours we are that's then that's the win for you. And then you mentioned also about increasing public comment.

I'm sorry, public participation. So you think also by us keeping these meetings, you're going to see is that another measure of goal to see that the the diet or the chambers filled with more people.

I, I would hope so. I mean, to me, it's, it's very, very difficult. And even before I was elected as as a guy representing clients, it was difficult to sit in the pew for hours and hours and hours as

Council separated. Six items off of the consent agenda and spent 20 minutes per consent agenda item and then got to regular business already 90 minutes into the meeting, like we we have to be

cognizant of those things because participation from the public there, there isn't anybody that really wants to sit here until 10 o'clock at night to give their comment, we have to be more predictable

and allow people to to be able to predict what we're going to be doing and what our schedule is going to look like. In these meetings, thank you, Mary. That's all my questions. Thank you. Mr. Aspen

lighter your super majority of a votes to continue. Robert says it at 66% rather than 75. Why did you go? And frankly, I'm fine. If it's two thirds majority versus a super majority. What I don't want

it to be as a simple majority. I think we need to. I don't want to make it so easy that this just doesn't mean anything. If we're going to do it, then we need to do it. So whether it's two thirds or a

super majority, that's really insignificant. So since this is the work session, I'm just going to throw this out. What would you think of you tabling this initiative till January 1st? But we follow

these rules religiously between now and the end of the year. And we determine as a body, did we fall? Could we do this or not? Rather than ordering us to do it, make it make us responsible for

ourselves. Just throwing that off for a conjecture. I don't trust that we're actually going to do it unless we make it make it a rule. I don't trust that we're actually going to do it because we we do

this for three years now. We have this conversation about efficiency, about making sure we're we're working through the business in an effective manner about every six months. And it's good for about

a month or six weeks and then it slowly starts to fade back into the old way. That's why I went to put it in the rules because I don't trust that we are actually going to follow even the rules that we

have. So, I mean, I'm I'm game for anything, frankly, but I don't trust that we we actually will follow through unless we make it a rule. Just to follow up, Mayor. Go ahead, Mr. Boyett. My thought is

if we don't follow it, I'll be behind you with the red flag. So, my thought is let's force ourselves to adhere by these rules. And then January 1st, if it's not, I'll be right behind you waving the

flag saying we're going to we're going to impound these rules into our system and and let you know, let it happen. I'm just thinking rather than forces, we should be able to do this ourselves. Just go

ahead, Ms. Aguirre. Thank you. I am with you, C.M. Boyett. C.M. Aspen Lighter. I think this comes from a very genuine space and your your notion that you can't trust that will hold ourselves

accountable. Well, you're still getting to know some of us and some of us actually are very interested in using this these parameters to guide as a self self-governing model without having to be, you

know, written down and, you know, just as a directive. So I challenge you to extend some trust and give us the opportunity to go through the end of the year. And again, as C.M. Boyett said, if we are

not able to do this, I will support this. I have a question for city attorney if it's OK if I jumped in, what what kind of work do we need to go through just to put it in on a temporary basis? Do we

have to change city code? If you want to temporarily put a time limit on your meetings. Yeah. Well, I think you I think you could just do as Councilman Rassman Lighter suggested as a pilot type of

program and it be an informal. Well, you could you you can't really do it on an informal basis. You would have to set a time limit for each of your meetings. Somebody would have to make a motion. You

could we can do that schedule. You could do that at each meeting. All right. Yeah. OK, OK. Any more questions for our presenter, Mayor? Yes, sir. Mr. Nice. Actually, for our part of Linteria again, it

was regarding the question you're just asking Gina. Would it wouldn't that suffice just by putting where the German is if on our agenda, a a five thirty time or seven thirty two, whatever it may be,

whatever time we're going to actually adjourn at for that work session or or a business session. And then if we don't extend it by that time frame where it says a journey at, you know, seven thirty,

then we're adjourned. Councilmember nice. I'm I'm I think I might have missed some of the first part of what you said. So I'm not sure I know. I understand your question exactly. So if you look at our

agenda, our agenda has our starting time, you know, and then at the very bottom it says adjourn and has a colon. Why not just put adjourn, you know, at, you know, seven thirty on work sessions and

eight thirty on on business sessions. Would that not suffice? That's the agenda that we have adopted. Oh, yes, I got you. Instead of making a motion at every meeting, you could have a standing. So you

could make a motion at some point and that could be a standing type of. Yes, if you adopt the agenda that way, that would be another acceptable way of achieving that. OK, just want to clarify that is

how done. Thank you. And the mayor, when you write, I do have some comments I'd like to say, but I'm just doing questions right now. All right. So we're going to go to a public comment before we

speechify and debate. So there are any questions for our only seven twenty nine. You can leave a seven thirty. Do we have any questions or comments for Mr. Aspen later before we move to public

comment? All right. Public comment. It is Mr. Mayor, how about I make this how about I make this easy? Let's let's try to hold ourselves accountable for the next three months. Well, let's table this

for three months. Revisited the first or first or second work session of January and see how this goes. I'm dubious, but we have limited to get to the agenda. The point of this was to have the

conversation about what why can't we do this better? So if we can try to do this, I'm happy to do it. It's fine by me. Council, we would need an agreement. Are we all in agreement that we would table

this until January? We would have to put in a regular post-fund completion of this agenda item to table it until the first meeting in January. Yeah, yeah. So let's, can you put that in a way of a

motion so we can kind of vote on it? You could just make the motion to direct staff to... Just may I have a motion? Hold on just a second, Mr. Mayor. You could just make the motion to direct staff and

place it on the work session agenda. Mr. Mayor, I'll move to place this initiative on the first available work session in January. Second? I don't think we do because we're not going to go through

with it. So do we have a second? Dr. Nicholson seconds. All those in favor of Mr. Aspenlider's motions? Point of order. Yes, sir, Mr. Nees. There's been no common or public comment on this motion

before we're taking a vote. And there's been no debate. I'm, okay. Well, I don't believe we need public comment at this point. So you can, you can sit down. We're not, we're not saying no public

comment yet. We've got a motion in front of us. All right, Mr. Nees, thank you. Any comments on the motion to table this or postpone it until January? And thank you, Mr. Nees. Go ahead, Mr. Nees.

Yeah, I, I'm, I'm, I'm going to vote against the motion. And I, I think what the mayor has done in the last couple of weeks, as far as properly making sure we as council members run the meeting with

questions first and then not grandstanding during our question time, which takes up a ton of time. And I say, I've done it plenty of times because we all have been doing that. But the last few weeks

of the mayor has been making sure that we ask questions first at question time and we interrupt and wait for our grandstanding until, if we do grandstanding during the debate. I think that's helped a

ton and that's gotten us through those meetings faster. To point Scott's point, I believe he's correct in the sense that we would take way too much time and we have these committees set up. But, yeah,

we, the committees have no teeth, no power, no authority to actually make sure those items are, are go through the committees first. The city administrator can run anything they do directly to the

council without going through the committee. So if before we are to or during this process, one of the things we'd have to do if we are going to limit our time, we need to make sure those committees

have to be seen those items first and go through the committee. So they are worked out before they come to council and and they can go through the council, go through the council sooner. So I agree

that that what the mayor has done in the last few weeks has worked well. I think we'll get our things through our time, but I think they also the city minister has to realize and when they're putting

the agenda together. If it's only if it's a simple agenda, like we've had the last several weeks is maybe they only on a business session, they only give us a two hour agenda. Maybe they give us, you

know, a five hour agenda, whatever it may be. They're the ones who need to know what the business is and they should be able to recommend that adjournment time if we're going to set a time because

they know what the business of the day is. And so I would I would suggest we if we're going to do something like that, that's where we would look at it. And we can talk about it in that thing. But I

think what we're doing now is find Meryl, be quiet and we can have that vote if no one else has a comment. Thank you, Council Member Neeson. The motion, though, is to delay this for consideration

until the first work session in January, first available work session in January. And we do have a second to that. Any other debate regarding that motion, Mr. Dr. Nicholson, I just like to comment

that I like having a gun held to my head sometimes and bring this up again in January is the right kind of gun. And in the meantime, we can use Robert's rules effectively and show that we can be

disciplined and we can complete the people's business in a timely manner with the rules we already have. Very good. Anybody else? All right. Seeing none, let's vote on Mr. Aspenlider's motion at hand.

All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Nay. OK, thank you. So motion passes. We'll reconsider this in January. Folks, I'm sorry, we won't need to have a public comment on this, but we do

have one more public comment period scheduled for this meeting. So bear with us for about five minutes and we'll be right with you. We'll move to highlighting upcoming agenda items of council

interest. Please have a seat. We'll be right with you. We'll give you your public comment period in just a few minutes. No, we didn't we decided not to. We didn't address that particular issue. We

didn't get far enough to have a public comment on there. We're going to have one later at the end of the meeting. So please have a seat. We'll be right with you. Please have a seat. We'll be right

with you. We'd like to I have already explained that. So we're going to go now to highlighting upcoming agenda items of council interest. Thanks, Mayor. Really, you've seen the agenda, so really the

only thing that I would point out to highlight is you're going to be considering the storm system development fees next Monday, as well as to the application for the Edward Jones building. Those will

be on your regular agenda next week. All right, thank you. Now we move on to council discussion. Any items that the council wants to bring up to discuss? Go ahead. There is a budget meeting this

Wednesday. See the budget committee at that time, the agenda went out today. So you should have that. Very good. Thank you. Anybody else? Mr. Kennedy? Mayor, on Thursday this week, the 22nd at 3

o'clock, we do have the federal lobbyists here. And we'll be talking about federal legislation. Federal lobbyists on Thursday. Mr. Lindley, did I see you have your hand up? Yeah, you did, Mayor.

Seeing that this is a work session and an informal meeting where the agenda is subject to change at the meeting, I move that we adjourn. Second. So-- It's a motion on the table, Mr. Mayor. Yes, sir, I

know. Mayor, a question for the parliamentarian? One moment, please. So what was your motion? To adjourn. My motion was simply to adjourn. Can you give us just a minute here, please? Ms.

Parliamentarian, I don't see that on my table here. I'm sorry, Mayor, you don't see what-- What type of a vote and do we debate a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn is not debatable. Oh, a motion to

adjourn is always appropriate, but you have not yet finished your agenda tonight. That's the only comment I would make. At the bottom of the agenda, it says this is an informal meeting and the content

of the agenda is subject to change at the meeting. Right. There's an attorney general opinion that requires you to have the public comment period that we have at the end of our work session agenda.

All right, so we're going to follow that. And we will have the public comment. Mayor. Yes, Mr. Nees. Didn't we not have our public comment at the beginning of the meeting? Sir, we've noticed on our

agenda item that there's public comment on the bottom. We've had this discussion in council ops before, so we're going to go through with the public comment period. Thank you. All right, folks, come

on up. Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Jeff Kettleson. I live in the fifth ward. Thank you very much for your service. I'd like to speak concerning the proposal put forth by

Council Member Aspen Lighter. I do understand exactly what you're talking about because I've sat here with you and it gets really, really late. And I think that may be that there is some validity

exactly with what you're proposing. I think from a citizen standpoint, I think that the agendas are over-repacked usually. And you run into huge problems when you have a lot of annexations, stuff like

that. So I do agree there is a problem. What I would like the council to take into consideration is that council work meetings and council business meetings are always held at 5.30 at night. The

reason why it's held, I believe, at 5.30 at night is so the citizens that have to go to work, if they want to come in and express their opinion, they can do that after work. So I would hope that that

would be taken in consideration in January if you do decide to move forward. I would be strongly against rolling it over to 12 AM the next day because that removes all the citizens that have to work.

But I do agree with you. I think that a little tighter is a little better. Thank you very much. Come forward. My name is Lane Dorsey. I live in Billings. So in the form, there's a lot of talk about

making these meetings more predictable, predictability. But we just had a debate about whether or not we would get to have public comment, which we've come here for. So the fact that it was up for

debate, us talking about this item is not predictable at all. I agree with Jeff. I think that a lot of the time, the meetings are overpacked in the agenda. But as has been said, have some discipline

and do your homework beforehand so that those meetings don't run on. And also, really important point is that if you claim to want to listen to people in Billings speak on issues, you cannot roll over

the meetings to noon the next day. Do you understand that most people are at work? I understand that this is your job. So for you, it's easy. But I don't work on city council. I work on the shop

floor. So it shows a real lack of consideration to even debate the idea of rolling over the meeting until noon the next day. When we came here to talk about the Model Cities Initiative, which would

have given ICE a blank check to terrorize members of our community, that work session went for 2 and 1/2 hours. And that means that we wouldn't have been able to speak on those issues and that we

wouldn't have been able to voice our disapproval of us even debating giving money to ICE to terrorize members of our community. So you've got to consider working class people. Do not roll over your

meetings to noon. Thank you. Next. My name is Andreas Story. I live in Ward 5. And I think this whole meeting and this agenda item that has been pushed over in public comment has been set or ignored

for begs the question, what is this body about? What is it about? Is it what Scott Aspinlider would like it to be a fun side job to his business where he gets to sit here and look bored, or is it

where you're going to listen to your constituents and make decisions that are going to help the people who live in your community? There's a real decision to be made here. If we want to tighten up

what the meetings are like, again, you guys can do that without limiting public comment. Like the two people before me have said, rolling over the meetings to the next day at noon severely limits

working people's ability to comment, to have a voice. Aspinlider somehow claimed that this is going to increase the amount of public comment that's going to be had. I think that's a joke. That's an

absolute joke. That limits working people's ability to actually talk at these meetings. I got off of work and came here. I wouldn't have been able to be here if we're talking about Tuesday and the

next day at noon. If you guys need to figure something out to make these meetings more efficient, do that. Do that without limiting our public comment. More than you already have today. Right here it

says my time is limited to three minutes. Seems like the time is set to two. This body is making so many attacks on our right to talk to them, and that's shameful. And I'd also like to point out how

this apparently isn't a back and forth until it is, until Mayor Nelson or any of the city council members just decide that they want to have a back and forth with us about, frankly, not important

issues. Mindy Nelson, In the Heights is where I live. I was born in Plentywood, Montana. This is a humdinger. You guys are recorded. I mean, I don't think you remember that. I really don't think you.

Because we've already mentioned about people that work the next day. What about the people with two or more jobs? What about them? They never get to participate. You know why? It's set up that way.

Has anybody noticed that? They don't get to participate ever. But you know what? When I was campaigning for people, we go after those people. We go-- that's a couple of the groups I used to be with.

We go after those people to the very last day and take them a ballot because they have a baby in the house. And it's just her and the baby. And whatever circumstances she's in. I was at the library

this past Saturday. And I was working around at night. And there's a lady that sleeps. She sleeps-- I can't remember the business. But I worked at the post office. And I did about everything. So you

go ahead and ask anybody. But I used to work with the mail service that used to be there across from the library. There's a woman sleeping there. I see people sleeping on our streets all the time.

Some more. When I was a member of Billings Unitarian Universal Fellowship, we went-- I think it was around 2017. I'll just bring into this. I was fired about that time at the post office. Got my job

back. And yeah, go ahead. Look it up. Ask people. And the little police officer back there, he about rested me at the Heights Water because of Mr. S-Men and his no vote by mail. I can't continue with

my discussion because you people don't even know what you're voting on. It's totally applicable. Thank you, ma'am. Any other public comment? Ellis Tillery, 59101. So I don't know how bright you are,

Scott. But you may have noticed that we were using all of our time. That was my idea. And I think you missed the point. Because the point is that even though there aren't a bunch of people here right

now, when you do have important issues on the agenda, people will show up. And the meeting will run long because people want to talk. This is not supposed to be convenient for you. Literally nobody is

making you do this. It's supposed to be convenient for us. We're supposed to be able to come and say whatever. I've been to hockey practice later than this. I would say that's a lot less important

than city council. This is ridiculous. You didn't even bring a PowerPoint for your proposal. If you want to talk about how long your meetings are running, you guys need to do your homework. We spent

most of the time, you guys, figuring out what the issue was even about instead of debating the merits of the idea of the motion. I do not understand why they come up and they give this presentation to

you and us at the same time. Why can't you guys get a more thorough presentation in the middle of the day and an abridged one for us to comment on and to refresh you guys before you vote? This is just

ridiculous. And you are limiting our time and our free speech. I am here, not as a partisan. I'm here because you are attacking free speech with this motion and you're attacking our free speech by

limiting our time because you're a snowflake and you don't want to sit there and get talked at. It's ridiculous. Try taking less recesses. How about that? Thank you. - Anybody else? Any other public

comment? Nope, sorry. You've already spoken. Anyone else? All right, any objections to us adjourning? Then we are adjourned.