RIVER FALLS — The River Falls City Council heard the first reading of the budget proposal at the Oct. 27 meeting, showing an average increase of $20-25 to the city portion of residential tax bills.

City Finance Director Josh Solinger presented the reading, which was for 2027, the first of two years in the biennial budget.

The budget for 2027 would be $70,517,996 with a tax levy of $8,950,151. Breaking down the levy, 72% would be budgeted toward the general fund, 14% toward debt service, 11% for the library and 3% for capital cash financing.

The total levy is increasing 5.56% from $8.48 million, with the increase being 3% when accounting for the growth in the tax base. The tax rate increases just shy of 2%, going from $4.35 to $4.44 per $1,000 of property value.

“There’s more happening in the property tax base than just net new construction. There’s just market inflation, and there’s also changes to existing properties that don’t necessarily qualify as net new construction from the state’s perspective. There may be certain additions to a home that certainly would drive a small increase in the property tax base, but don’t qualify as net new construction,” Solinger said. “When you take into account all the things that drive changes in the property tax base, you end up at a 1.96% increase for the mill rate.”

Solinger said the estimated residential property (about $350,000 in property value) will see an increase of 1.8%, a roughly $20-25 increase to $1,550.

Notably, the rates and percentages only apply to the city’s portion of the taxes, not accounting for the school and other taxes. Alderperson Nick Carow credited the city for its growth while keeping the tax rate in consideration.

“The city’s done a really good job between the budget and between other process along with the growth to really minimize that impact. If other bodies that taxed you did this, you would have different taxes than you have now,” Carow said. “Cities that grow flourish. Cities that do not grow tend to not flourish.”

Flock Contract

Council unanimously voted to terminate the Flock contract. The police department announced Oct. 13 that after an internal investigation, the department had “lost confidence in Flock safety as a service provider.” The department claimed it had investigative successes with the cameras but decided to discontinue the use of them because of the findings.

City documents stated the following regarding the recommendation to remove the cameras:

“This determination follows concerns regarding Flock's data management practices, contractual transparency, responsiveness, and the level of trust and accountability necessary for a company providing technology to law enforcement. The decision is not based on the assessment that ALPR technology lacks investigative value. Rather, it reflects the Chief of Police's assessment that the department can no longer maintain the level of confidence in Flock Safety necessary to justify continuing the relationship.”

While City Administrator Scot Simpson later clarified that the staff recommendation did not stem from this reasoning, Alderperson Sean Downing said the cameras violate the rights of the citizens.

“Removing Flock Cameras and any surveillance technology like that is the right action to take. I am grateful for our police chief recognizing Flock's flaws with transparency. Clearly they are hiding more. I urge council and the city to reject this invasive mass-surveillance technology and other forms of it. At a large scale it enables warrantless tracking and creates a surveillance spy network that in my opinion violates our Fourth Amendment rights and infringes on our First Amendment rights. Artificial intelligence stitches this data together to expose our private lives, tracking medical visits, religious services, your personal choices you make for you. All of which is supposed to be constitutionally protected, and if not properly protected, information, those generated digital fingerprints and records can be used against people by their own government in ways they have not imagined. There are other basic problems as well, these types of spy networks can be abused. You may have already heard some of the stalking stories. System errors have already led to innocent families being held at gunpoint. Please protect our civil rights and liberties and remove Flock and oppose any other dystopian surveillance technology like it," Downing said.

Yard waste site

An estimated $49.400 contract for yard waste site grinding services was approved with Sylvesters Custom Grinding. The contract is for a three-year term with an option for a two-year extension. The price tag is based on the average annual cost from the previous three years.

Downing asked, based on previous public inquiries about the location, whether the city has the potential to move the site while retaining the contract in the future.

“There’s nothing in here that limits it to a specific site, but I would agree that if you were to somehow relocate the yard waste site further away where their mileage would increase then they’d be able to reasonably ask for an increase, but we’d keep it within the general territorial limits of the City of River Falls,” City Attorney Chris Gierhart said.

“My advice to you as a councilmember, if you are only approving the contract because you think we can move it to another location with the same fees then I wouldn’t vote for it. If you’re comfortable approving it knowing that we can’t simply move it to another location without having discussion then you can approve it,” Simpson said.

Alderperson Diane Odeen said contracts can be renegotiated, and they can have that conversation if the council is interested in moving the site down the line. The item was eventually unanimously approved.

Ride Service

Council approved both a grant application and a lease agreement with Running, Inc. for shared ride taxi operation in the city.

“There’s other communities in this area who don’t fund this the way we do, but the city’s done a very good job of prioritizing this,” Carow said. “When we talk about equity and inclusion and those initiatives, this is a very important part of it. As I watched my father struggle with mobility before he passed away, he never used this, and he should have.”

Simpson said the grant funding would bring in 80% of funding from the state and federal level for the purchase of new vans. Operations would be funded slightly below 50% from those sources.

“As part of that grant we agree to purchase vans. We don’t have to contract with an operator; we can try to do it ourselves. There’s some procurement requirements, though. There’s things we can stipulate and that we can’t,” Simpson said.

The reason the city opts to contract is to shift the responsibility of day-to-day operations, maintenance, insurance and storage on the contractor. The city purchases the vans through the 80/20 funding, then leases them to the contractor.

Simpson said the door-to-door service completes thousands of rides per year. The cost to the city is $43 per van per hour. Small fares are also tacked on to the rides in order to fund the service. According to Simpson, the annual budgeted cost to the city for the service is about $100,000.

There were concerns expressed about the company’s ability to pay a living wage to its employees; however, a clarification that the $43 per hour is for each operating van rather than all three alleviated some of the worries. The item was approved unanimously.

Other business

• Approved the 2027 health and dental insurance renewal.
• Accepted the Cops Technology and Program award for $431,183 in federal funding.
• Authorized special assessment police powers for the Downtown Business Improvement District.