Langdon City Commissioners

Commissioner President: Charles Downs - Term ends June 2014

Street Commissioner: Dennis Flaten - Term ends June 2014

Water Commissioner: Garrett Freier - Term ends June 2014

Sanitation Commissioner: Marty Tetrault - Term ends June 2012

Activity Center/Fire/Police Commissioner: Lawrence Henry - Term ends June 2012

City Commission Proceeding:

Regular Meeting of the Langdon City Commission

March 26, 2012

The meeting was called to order by Mr. Downs.  The following members of the Commission were present: Charles Downs, Dennis Flaten, and Lawrence Henry. Marty Tetrault  and Garrett Freier were absent.  Also present were: Rob Gilseth, Chad Mittleider, Tom Beauchamp, Cameron Sillers, Judy Lill, Gary Bimler, Mel Carsen, and Connie Schrader.  Mr. Downs led those present in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Approval of the minutes:  Mr. Henry approved the minutes and Mr. Flaten seconded it.  All members voted in favor.

Correspondence: None

Department Reports:

City Superintendent/Street: Mr. Gilseth reported that the street sweeper has been out for 5 days and has broken down those 5 days.  Mr. Gilseth asked the commission to build a cold storage building to store equipment in it.  The sweeper ends up outside every year.  He has replaced 3 alternators in the last 3 years and put new bearing in the rollers for the conveyor before putting it away last fall.  He used it this year and used it a day and a half, and 2 of the 4 rollers were shot. Both of the rollers were brand new.  Mr. Gilseth feels that being it sets outside in the snow and in the open; it just isn’t good for it. He is looking at a 24 X 30 or 30 X 30 with a 10 to 12 ft door, not insulated and no electricity.  He has a cement slab from the old Quonset and uses that for the new shed. He talked to his employees and felt they can put the building up this summer. He states he has $20,000 in the equipment reserve and in the best interest; he has 10 years to go to buy a sweeper because of the cost is $100,000 to 160,000.  Mr. Downs feel he should build a bigger shop, but Mr. Gilseth is trying to work with what he has built up and not cause any burden on his department later on down the road. He just wants to have the storage he needs to keep equipment in better condition.  The commission wants to have Mr. Gilseth to check into the prices of building and more discussion will take place.

Water/Sewer:  Mr. Mittleider stated they are remodeling the water plant to make it cleaner and easier to clean.  Water treatment wise, the water came in softer in the last day. It has dropped 90 parts over the last day and he doesn’t know it’s the rain finally getting up to our intake at the dam, but the dam is considerably much softer than here. He is wondering if it would be cost effective to run a booster which can be pretty spendy from the booster station.  We are thinking of doing it for a trial run to do the intake station itself this summer to have everything set up. This is considerably softer from the lake and this will be a good time to save on softening and electricity.  This is good experience to make sure the things that have been done works the way we want it to.  We are still waiting for people to sign the permit at Munich.    

Sanitation: Mr. Beauchamp reported he started the compost program for the summer.  The truck has been working fine the last month and still hasn’t gotten anything from Mack on the warrantee. A conference call from the salesman and the representative of Mack, he thinks something will be done, but doesn’t know what. Mr. Downs asked Mr. Beauchamp if he has been working on a day for spring cleanup.  He needs to talk with Mr. Gilseth and Mr. Mittleider to see what works best for their departments.  It will be in the 3rd week of May.  By next meeting, he will have a date.   

Police/Activity Center:   Ms Lill had an auction sale this last Saturday and everything went well.  Mr. Henry reported in town this weekend a peddler was in town. The company called Ms. Schrader for a permit today.  Mr. Flaten asked about the ceiling fans at the Activity Center, if they can be turned on.  Mr. Downs states there is an aqua stat that takes warm water so that they turn, but he is pretty sure they are set up for heating only.  Mr. Flaten suggested an exhaust fan to either blow out or in. Mr. Gilseth how about industrial ceiling fans and put on a separate control.  This is another option.         

Auditors Report: Roxanne and I went to a conference in Bismarck through the League of Cities Tuesday thru Thursday and left Monday afternoon.  Ms. Schrader stated Measure 2 had a major discussion Speakers were Cory Fong-State Tax Director, Dwight Cook-State Legislator, and John Walstad Legislative Council.  It was a very good discussion.  Ms. Schrader hopes people look at the Measure very carefully and do some investigating to find out what this is about. Ms. Schrader asked if anyone went to the meeting last Wednesday night on Measure 2.  Mr. Downs stated he went. There was no proponents there-the ones initiating the Measure.  There were 2 legislators; Mr. Damshen sits on the committee that dealing with this and if it goes into effect, the legislature is going to be scrambling.  They will be in session 2 days later and be full time. Ms. Schrader stated that cities in North Dakota will have to stand in line to get permission from the Legislature to do improvements to your own city.  Mr. Downs also stated we put our budget together like we always do, and then send it to the Legislature.  The Legislature doesn't’t seem to know what to do either if it passes.  Ms. Schrader states that cities will get funding, but how much, compared to bigger cities. Will they get more and us as a smaller city get what is left? No one really know that either. Mr. Downs’s states how far down are they going to look at the budgets. Everything is a big if!  Ms. Schrader stated she was driving around with Mr. Carson today to look homes for assessing, working on payroll, and paying bills.                                                                                 

Unfinished Business:

New Business:

Mel Carson: Mr. Carson wanted to talk to the commission about the 2012 Residential Sales Ratio Study for 2011 Sales. He explains the left side of the handout which is the current assessment which lists the sale price, current value, and the ratio. On the same side toward the bottom of the page, the median is at 82.79%.  He explains the state tolerance use to be 95-100%.  Last month the State Board of Equalization met and moved it to 90-100%.  Langdon is not judged on its own merits.  It is judged along with all of Cavalier County.  We wouldn’t have to raise it to 82 to 90, but ideally we should have a 5% increase on residential to bring our assessments county wide within tolerance. The right side of the form, after reviewing each sale, Ms. Schrader & I, we have corrected the discrepancies in the appraisals and Mr. Carson adjusted our manual.  Mr. Carson has created 3 tiers and created 3 obsolescence based on the age of the home.  With these new values, with taken into account those changes, we come up with a ratio of 93.03% bases on 2011 year sales.  Mr. Carson stated we need to do something with the assessments. He stated there aren’t enough commercial sales to do a study just on a 1 year basis.  The city is sitting at a 98.71% ratio with that of the usable sales.  The handout on the left hand side is the 2011 values and right side of the page is the test values. The test values are after the increase of rates, adjusting the economic obsolescence by age these are the numbers I have come up with and feel this is the best for Langdon.  For homes from 1970 & newer, the economic obsolescence use to vary from 22% to 30% and doesn’t know why, and they are all moving to 20% according to my scenario.  From 1950 up to 1970 those will be moved to 25%.  From 1949 and older it’s moved to 40%.  Economic obsolescence is defined as a lack of desire in the market place for that type of home.  What we need to do, is find the lack of desire to buy that older home.  It seems like there is an over evaluation of the older properties and gross under evaluation of the newer properties. That is evidence by this report shows you the price related differential is 1.16 and what that is telling you is it should read 100. If you are treating older property or lower classed properties and your upper classed properties the same this would be 100.  Anytime you go over a 100%, that means you are over assessing the lower priced properties and under assessing the upper end properties.  If you look to the right side of the sheet, Mr. Carson has made corrections the Price Related Differential drops to 1.05.  This is quite a correction.  This correction that am correcting will not clear up all corrections and discrepancies, but this will move us closer to where we should be.  The end result on residential property would be a 5.9% increase on residential property overall.  It would be 167 people would get an increase of more than 10%.  If it is more that 10%, a written notice needs to be sent out to the residents 15 days before the equalization meeting. Mr. Downs stated he likes the idea, but sending out 167 notices he doesn’t like.  Our equalization meeting will take too long with 167 people that get notices.  The commission suggested bumping it down to 5% instead of 10%.  This would be around 60 people with notices and commission would feel this will be better. The reason we are in this dilemma, is the program used for 20 yrs. or at least 15 yrs. has a depreciation schedule that clicks off  and makes the house 1 year older.  It is applying more depreciation every year about ½%. This all happened since 2002 the base rate or none of the rates have been changed at all.  For 10 years the rates have not gone up and the depreciation continued to take the value down.  If you are comparing values 10 years ago, you are going down 7% overall. The depreciation has gone down 7% in a 10 year time and the rates didn’t go up at all.  We are correcting the rate increase and we are shuffling with the older ones verses the new ones.  Effective age also drives down the depreciation.  Mr. Carlson states he checks the effective age when assessing homes.  Over the 20 years, Mel has developed at 12 point formula. He has been teaching Ms. Schrader how to determine the effective age. An example is if you replace siding on the house x% of the overall value and is done in 2012 this means 12% is considered new. The other part of the 88% of the house is determined another age.  So if you replace windows, kitchen cabinets, all those things drive up the effective age.  Mr. Carson stated that if you did nothing, you are over assessing the poorer properties significantly and under assessing the better properties.  He feels you owe it to your people to at least rectify that to some extent.  He feels we need to move it in the right direction. Maybe we should back it off a bit and only 2% or 3% increase.  Mr. Downs thought in which he had was split the difference take a couple of jumps and hopefully the state won’t come in to say we are still under assessed and mandate increases.  Mr. Carson can adjust the rate to 90% and keep an eye on it. Mr. Downs stated we are trying to rectify 20 years of assessment in 1 year tax period.   You need to be consistent with this program.  He will back it off, but stay in tolerance. Mr. Carson will generate a new report and Ms. Schrader will get it to the commission to look it over. 

Extending Date for Board of Equalization: Mr. Carson asked the commission to extend the Board of the Equalization Meeting from April 10th by what the state has it set for and move it to May 14th.  The commission agreed to this.

Mark Lambrecht:  Mr. Lambrecht wanted to come up here to look at the new projects, especially 15th Avenue.  Mr. Gilseth mentioned to Mr. Lambrecht, the grass isn’t coming as well as we had hoped, so we have the guarantee from the specialty contractor and we will have him come up. Mr. Lambrecht asked if the commission had any questions or complaints about 15th Avenue. Mr. Downs stated he has only heard good things.  Mr. Lambrecht stated he thought it looked very good also. Mr. Lambrecht stated Chad already talked about the option on the wells at the Munich Aquifer and he has been talking with Perry and Cal and that is going well.  Mr. Sillers wanted to know where this is at.  Mr. Lambrecht showed the commission the map and explained where the wells would be placed.  The water rights will be in both the city and rural water district.  Mr. Flaten suggested we need to get plans ready for street projects.

Catering License for At the Hop:  A motion to approve the catering license for the Schefter Wedding was by Mr. Flaten and seconded by Mr. Henry.

Building Permit: :#3993-Catherine Welch. A motion to approve the building permit was by Mr. Flaten and seconded by Mr. Henry.   All members voted in favor.                      

Approval of Bills: A motion to approve bills was Mr. Henry and seconded by Mr. Flaten. All members voted in favor.

49444

BLACK MOUNTAIN SOFTWARE

5650.00

49445

CAVALIER RURAL ELECTRIC COOP.

358.34

49446

COUNTRY MEDIA

450.90

49447

DAN'S TRUCK & CAR WASH

244.01

49448

Duckwall-Alco Stores INC

61.68

49449

FARMER'S UNION OIL CO.

4598.77

49450

H.E. EVERSON CO.

344.92

49451

HAWKINS, INC.

5.00

49452

HI-WAY LAUNDRY & DRY CLEANERS

300.74

49453

KNDK

241.00

49454

LANGDON BUILDING CENTER

1344.25

49455

LANGDON HARDWARE & RENTAL

976.83

49456

MAR-KIT LANDFILL

5128.65

49457

MEL CARSON

1575.00

49458

MIDCONTINENT COMMUNICATIONS

52.03

49459

MIKE SCHRADER

48.00

49460

MOSTAD INSURANCE SERVICES, INC.

118.00

49461

NORTH DAKOTA PUBLIC HEALTH LABORATORY

32.00

49462

OTTERTAIL POWER CO.

6465.54

49463

PRISTINE HYDROCHEMICAL INC.

1364.12

49464

QUALITY SPECIALTY PRODUCTS & PRINTING

196.66

49465

T&C AIR FILTER CLEANING

20.00

49466

UNITED TELEPHONE CO.

878.83

49467

VERIZON WIRELESS

240.76

49468

WAREHOUSE FOODS

88.57

49469

CAVALIER RURAL ELECTRIC COOP.

286.50

49470

PEMBINA COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPT

33.26

49471

SPORTS IMPORTS

1746.73

49472-49489  PAYROLL REG. & ELECTRONIC

19216.18

49485

HARTFORD MUTUAL FUNDS

390.16

49490

AQUALOGIX

549.00

49491

BRYAN BRINEGAR

23.85

49492

BUD'S SERVICE PRODUCTS

277.82

49493

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

150.00

49494

Connie Schrader

312.28

49495

FLEXIBLE PIPE TOOL COMPANY

69.83

49496

GRAYMONT CAPITAL INC.

2142.00

49497

HOLTZ INDUSTRIES

235.00

49498

KILLORAN TRUCKING & BROCKERAGE, INC

1541.82

49499

LACAL EQUIPMENT, INC.

1818.80

49500

MID-AMERICAN RESEARCH CHEMICAL

3404.51

49501

NEWMAN TRAFFIC SIGNS

8.37

49502

SAMSON ELECTRIC

175.00

49503

USA BLUEBOOK

641.37

49504

PITNEY BOWES

264.33

49506

RoxAnne Hoffarth

267.80

49507

U.S. POST OFFICE

262.36

With further business, a motion to adjourn was by Mr. Henry and seconded by Mr. Downs. All members voted in favor.

________________________             _________________________

Charles Downs, President                     Connie Schrader, City Auditor