Clarkston Sunshine

Introduction:

Links to the video recording and the council packet are at the bottom of this post. Please note any errors or omissions in the comments. Anything noted in brackets was inserted by Clarkston Sunshine.

Agenda Item #1, Call to Order (video time mark 0:00:00):

Sue Wylie said OK, everybody, it is 7 o’clock. So, I’m going to call the meeting to order.

Agenda Item #2, Pledge of Allegiance (video time mark 0:00:04):

Wylie said if everybody would please rise, we’ll say the Pledge of Allegiance.

(Pledge said.)

Wylie said thank you.

Agenda Item #3, Roll Call (video time mark 0:00:25):

Wylie said Item #3 on our agenda is the roll call. (To city manager Jonathan Smith), Wylie said if you would take the roll call, please. Smith said yes.

Sue Wylie, Laura Rodgers, Al Avery, Gary Casey, Amanda Forte, Erica Jones, and Ted Quisenberry were present.

Wylie said thank you. Everybody’s here.

Agenda Item #4, Approval of Agenda – Motion (video time mark 0:00:44):

Wylie said Item #4 is approval of the agenda. I’ll need a motion to approve the agenda as it is presented.

Rodgers and Jones said I’ll make a motion. Wylie said I’m sorry. Rodgers said I’ll make a motion. Wylie said and by the way, I have a plugged up ear. So, if I don’t hear you on that side. So that was from Laura Rodgers. Is there a second? Second Jones.

Wylie said any discussion from council.

No discussion.

Wylie said any discussion from the public.

No discussion.

Motion to approve the agenda passed by unanimous voice vote.

Wylie said the agenda is approved.

Agenda Item #5, Public Comments (video time mark 0:01:13):

[Though public comments can sometimes irritate the city council, there is value to both the council and the public in hearing them. While they can’t eliminate public comments entirely without violating the Open Meetings Act, your city council has occasionally decided not to acknowledge public comments during a city council meeting unless the person submitting the comments also appears at the meeting (in-person or electronically) to personally read them. In the past, members of the public have been cut off for exceeding the city council’s arbitrary three-minute time limit (it’s arbitrary because no time limits are required by the Open Meetings Act).

If your public comments were submitted to the council but not read, or if you tried to make public comments but your comments were cut short, please email them to clarkstonsunshine@gmail.com and I will include them in my informal meeting summaries either under public comments or under the specific agenda item that you want to speak to.]

Wylie said Item #5 is public comments.

(Wylie read the rules for public comments.)

So, things for the budget is in the public hearing. But anything else, if you’d like, or anything else not on the agenda, you can address with public comments.

Wylie said does anybody like to make a public comment.

Is yours? I didn’t read it. Is yours for, your public comments for not the budget? (To Chet Pardee), Wylie said I’m talking to you. Pardee said yes. Wylie said or do you want to wait for the public hearing. Pardee said no. I’ve sent questions to Smith. Wylie said OK. So, this is something different. So, what you just handed out, is that what you’re going to talk about right now? Pardee said no, I handed out a public comment, 5/27, that says the city manager is in a pickle of his own making. He’s dragged council members, including finance committee members, into a wilderness. They believe what he says.

Wylie said so, that’s for the public hearing, because that’s talking about our budget, our public hearing today. Am I correct? I’m only reading, I just got it, so I’m just reading the first four paragraphs. Pardee said it’s got a whole lot of stuff in there. Wylie said that’s all part of the public hearing. If you’re talking about salaries, that’s part of the public hearing. Am I correct? Pardee said yes. Wylie said OK, all right. Avery said yeah, I mean, it’s fine if he brings it then.

Wylie said anybody else have public comments.

No comments.

Wylie said OK.

Agenda Item #6 – FYI: (video time mark 0:03:00):

• • The History of Clarkston’s Pony Cycle Flyer (page 3/67 of the council packet)

Wylie said we’ll move on to Item, agenda Item #6, FYI.

The history of the Pony Cycle. And we have something in our packet. Hear about the history of the Pony Cycle, the small motor scooter, built in Clarkston in the 1950s, and its impact on our town. This takes place on May 29, 2025, from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. at, I guess it’s the Clarkston Independence District Library, 6495 Clarkston Road, Clarkston, Michigan, 48346.

[The Hawke family owned Hawk Tool Company and manufactured the Pony Cycle in Clarkston. For additional information about the horrible way the Hawke family treated its Clarkston employees that included locking them out of the West Washington Street plant right before Christmas and never allowing them to come back to work, and why the city council should never have honored the Hawke Family by blowing $3,500 in taxpayer dollars to pay for a Pony Cycle display in Depot Park, see the Clarkston Secrets Post titled “How Do You Feel About Paying For A Personal Monument to Walled Lake Resident Terry Hawke’s Grandpa, Daddy, Auntie, And Uncle?,” linked here.]

[There were two additional items not noted on the agenda as follows:]

Wylie said we also have, from NoHAZ, the 2025 collection events. The next collection event is Saturday, June 7. It will be at Oxford Middle School, 1420 Lakeville Road in Oxford. And it says from M24 Lapeer Road, travel east on Burdick Road. And Clarkston is a participating community. So, if you want to do that.

Wylie said also for public, I’m sorry, for FYI, the Clarkston Farm and Garden Club perennial plant exchange is Saturday, also Saturday, June 7, from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m., downtown Clarkston Main Street parking lot, that’s on, is that the one in Washington? Rain or shine. Tip. Individually pot and identify the plants you are exchanging. Keep plants moist. Print ID labels from the website. And the website is given to you there.

Wylie said anything else that I missed for FYI.

No comments.

Agenda Item #7 – City Manager’s Report (video time mark 0:4:33):

• • 05-27-25 – City Manager’s Report (page 4/67 of the council packet)

Wylie said Item #8, I’m sorry, Item #7 is the city manager’s report. And we have one item included – city attorney search committee. (To Smith), Wylie said did you want to address that? Smith said no other comment needed. Wylie said OK. So, the search committee looks like it’s continuing. Targeted, planning on presenting a recommendation to council during the June 9th council meeting with a targeted start date of July 1, 2025.

Wylie said any questions or comments on city manager’s report.

Jones said can we go back to getting these packets double-sided? Smith said yes. Avery said I’d rather they didn’t, actually. Jones said no. OK. Avery said well, because they, well, it’d be different if they stopped because they run them all together and then at some point, we’re on item three but it’s on the back of item two and then you’re going like this. I mean, if they could separate them that way, I’d be fine with double. Wylie said that’s why I brought sticky notes today to divide the sections. Avery said yeah. Wylie said I can go either way. OK.

Agenda Item #8 – Consent Agenda (video time mark 0:5:34):

• • 04-28-2025 – Final Minutes, Regular City Council Meeting (page 5/67 of the council packet)
  • 05-12-2025 – Draft Minutes, Regular City Council Meeting (page 7/67 of the council packet)
  • 05-27-2025 – Treasurer’s Report (page 9/67 of the council packet)
  • 05-20-2025 – Revenue and Expenditure Report for the Period Ending 04-30-2025 (page 10/67 of the council packet)

Wylie said Item #8 is consent agenda. This includes the final minutes of the April 28, 2025, regular meeting, the draft minutes of the May 12, 2025, regular meeting, the treasurer’s report for May 27, and I will need a motion and a second to accept the consent agenda.

Motion by Quisenberry; second Jones.

Wylie said discussion or comments from council.

No comments.

Wylie said discussion or comments from the public.

No comments.

The motion to accept the consent agenda passed by unanimous voice vote.

Wylie said the consent agenda is accepted.

Agenda Item #9, Unfinished Business (video time mark 0:6:18):

Item A – Discussion: Traffic Congestion in the City due to I-75 Construction Detours (video time mark 0:6:22):

Wylie said Item #9 is unfinished business. This is a discussion, traffic congestion in the city due to I-75 construction detours. (To Smith), Wylie said I assume you’re going to talk about this? Smith said yes.

Smith said OK, so just a quick status update on the discussions with MDOT [Michigan Department of Transportation] and the [Oakland County] Road Commission [OCRC]. We did have a meeting, let’s see, it was a week ago, Thursday, with MDOT. There was a host of people from both MDOT and the Oakland County Road Commission on a call. They had a good discussion. They were very attuned to what I was asking and what Chuck Phyle [Independence Township Supervisor] from Independence Township was asking. A lot of good interaction on possible solutions. The MDOT folks were a bit on the quiet side. Clearly, part of their strategy is to say as little as they have to. The road commission was very interactive suggesting things, so I was very happy the road commission was on the call.

Smith said just so you know kind of where we’re headed and what will be coming to the next council meeting is a proposal to close, throughout the construction, so until basically Thanksgiving, close both Bluegrass and Miller. So, both roads would be closed. They did recognize when Independence Township said we’re looking at closing Bluegrass, Phyle called me in advance and let me know this, is that, so you know, Jonathan, I’m going to ask formally for it to be completely closed. Not just a barricade people can drive around, completely closed. And I said, well, you know, if you do that, you’re just pushing all your troubles onto me, and so now I’m going to have to do the same thing on Miller. Because all your phone calls will just now be transferred to me. So Phyle agreed and so he says let’s close both roads. I understand that pushes people down to Washington. There is a traffic light at Washington and that does help that regard. So that’s one change that I will be bringing to the next council meeting to get your approval to do that. You need to approve that. The next board meeting for the township, I’m not sure what their date is, but it will be right around the same time as our council meeting. So, I’m not sure if I’ll have their decision before or after.

Smith said next, we talked about MDOT’s really putting a lot of weight on this. I kind of discounted it, I don’t feel this is going to make a huge difference, but they can contact Google and there’s another map system, I don’t recall the name of it off the top of my head, but to notify them to not recommend Holcomb and Bluegrass or Miller or Washington, to not recommend that as a travel route. The official detour for people coming from the north, say Springfield Township, Davisburg area, the official detour is to take Dixie Highway all the way down to M-15, turn left on M-15, go north to get on the freeway. So that is the official detour, but people are just going the route they know, they’ve been doing it for years, is the back roads. And so, they’re going to change the Google map recommendation to not use those back roads. How many people use their Google system when they’re driving to their work every day of the week? I doubt it, but there might be some people that just say, well, I don’t know the construction today, so I’m going to use Google Maps. Anyways, they’re going to make that change. I don’t have high hopes that it’s going to make a big change, but maybe some.

Smith said next we talked about what I just mentioned, the official detour. They’re going to put up some new signage making it clear that the official detour route is Dixie Highway down to M-15. Once they get to M-15, I said, well, you’re going to have to extend the green arrow, the left green arrow from Dixie onto Main Street. You’re going to have to extend that to give that more time. You haven’t done that, and as a result, you’re just discouraging people from going that route. If your goal is to encourage people to go the official route, you need to make it as beneficial to them as possible. They agreed with that. They said, we’ll look at that timing. That’s an MDOT intersection. So, they said, we will look at the timing. I haven’t heard back I’ve sent a follow-up to the meeting minutes to ask, have they done that? I haven’t heard yet. So that, hopefully, will just encourage people to go that, if there’s a nice, long green arrow making it painless to go that route.

Smith said the fourth thing is the road commission has agreed, and I don’t have this in writing yet, but they have told me that they’re in agreement to make the intersection of Holcomb and Washington, West Washington, a four-way stop. Convert it from a two-way stop to a four-way stop. You might say, well, how does that help things? Well, it does reduce the kind of craziness that’s going on at that intersection. It does give time to all four directions. There have been some near accidents there. People doing daring things to try to get out across. So, I think this is an improvement. It gives people more time. Now, again, this all goes hand-in-hand with the other changes that are being proposed to get more people to follow Dixie, not to come down the back roads, but I think this is a necessary change. So, I formally asked for that. If council disagrees with that, please let me know that. They don’t need council approval to do this. They just said, Jonathan, if you’re asking for it, we will make this change. But I, if you disagree, you don’t think this is the right path, please let me know that.

Smith said but the thing, the one caveat to this, the big caveat, is that when we make this change from a two-way stop to a four-way stop, it will be permanent. Wylie said oh. Smith said they said, we do not like unwinding changes. It’s a dangerous situation. You’re, one day it’s a four-way stop, the next day it’s wide open. People coming off of Washington think they’ve got, it’s a four-way stop, we’ll put up signage clearly to make sure people know this is a four-way stop or not a four-way stop. We’ll, we’ll support it with signage. But, they don’t like unwinding changes once they’ve made them. So, they said, we’ll make the change, it’s the road commission, but we would like it to be into perpetuity. I don’t think, personally, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. There are a lot of speeders coming down Holcomb, having an extra stop sign there, I think it will be good to not only slow people down, but maybe they discourage people from flying down there knowing that they’re going to have to stop. So, here again, if you disagree, then we can talk about that. But that’s the direction we’re headed for Holcomb and Washington.

Smith said any thoughts on that?

Avery said yeah, I know that Miller’s a parking lot. I went down there the other day and, you know, I think at the last meeting, I kind of brushed it off a little bit by saying, well, we’ve got it bad on Holcomb. They had it worse on Miller, no doubt about it. I mean, it is bad down there. But when you close Miller and they close Blue Grass, Holcomb’s going to be a parking lot in both directions. It just is. I mean, you just added, I don’t know, hundreds of cars coming down to that one intersection. You’ve got nowhere else to go. So, you just turned that into a parking lot.

Smith said and I’ve voiced that concern with MDOT. Avery said well, Phyle kind of forced your hand. I mean, he says he’s going to get, you know, Bluegrass closed. You don’t have much choice. It’s already (unintelligible). Smith said right.

Rodgers said it looks to me like underlying – Wylie said Jones was next.

Jones said so, did this engineer come over and visit and actually do his visit to see the traffic at a real time and not the, you know, 10:30 a.m. when rush hour doesn’t exist?  Smith said they tell me they have. Jones said yes. Smith said I don’t know. I did not actually visit with them at the site but both the young guy and road commission engineers are looking at it, at the situation. Jones said thank you. Because it does, again, sound like we are bringing them the same issue repeatedly and they are not addressing that issue. They are addressing everything that actively makes it worse.

Smith said so, looking at the more systemic problem of what’s causing all this backup, is it the closure of the ramps? And I asked in the meeting, what is the possibility of reopening the southbound entrance at Dixie Highway, down by Bordine’s. Reopening that, because then all those people coming from the north would just get on 75 right there. They said that would be a monumental cost to them, because at that point in the I-75 changeover, all the southbound was on what was normally the northbound lanes. So, to get people from that entrance ramp across what is now closed, southbound, across over to the northbound, they have to create a pretty significant temporary road. So, they said basically “no” to that. Then Phyle made the point, well, why is it you’ve got these roads closed, a very valid point on Phyle’s part is, why have you got these roads, these exit ramps closed, when you’re working way down in Grand Blanc? And the response to that was, good or bad, the contractor was set to start at the north and work his way south. So, he’s doing all the reconstruction, the tear-up and the rebuilding of the road down at the north end. He won’t even be down here working on the roadway down here near M-15 until August, September, maybe even October. So, in the meantime, all these are closed, but he’s not going to be down here. And Phyle said, well, why can’t he start at the south end and work north, and then you’d get all that done, you could open, reopen the ramps, and life would be back to normal. They said, well, it’s too late. We cannot redirect that contractor to start at the south end and work his way north. It just can’t be done at this juncture. So – Jones said it must be really frustrating for him to continue asking the same type of relief and be getting the same frustrating response. Smith said yes. Avery said well, the response is no. Jones said yeah, no, I’m just saying – Avery said we keep asking, but they’ve made very clear. Jones said he’s doing the exact same thing to us. Yeah, we’ve had the exact same conversation. Wylie said we’re still doing the same things. Casey said no, we don’t (unintelligible). It’s possible to do that. Smith said anything’s possible, right? They’re just saying they don’t have the budget to do that.

(To Smith), Rodgers said what does it take to, if that, they start in the north, they’re not going to get to us until August, it doesn’t cross over any highways, why can’t we just open them until August? Avery said well, they ground them down already. Smith said yeah. Rodgers said they ground them down already. Smith said the first phase – (interrupting Smith), Rodgers said but they just sit there – (continuing) Smith said is through, so we’re through already. Rodgers said and I get why it’s beneficial to them, but to Avery’s point, it’s just going to shove everything further on down the road, and it’s going to be a parking lot on Main Street. You can let that signal on Dixie stay as long as you want. If it’s all, right now at rush hour, you know it’s backed up to Dixie. So, you’re not going to be able to make a left-hand or a right-hand turn off of there if every car is coming down that way.

Smith said well, there is some thought in their thought process. We’ll take this through. What they always, what they tell people doesn’t always sink in. What they almost have more reaction with is just how painful is it to go this route versus that route? People will find the least painful route. If coming down Holcomb is somewhat painful because it comes to a bottleneck at Washington but coming down Dixie with the new timed green arrow, they’re just flying through there, it just kind of incentivizes, naturally incentivizes them to follow the detour route. So, they can put up signs all day long is their point. And they said, will people follow? No, if they know this is the back road route they’ve always done, they’ll follow it. So, I hear what you’re saying, I said could you put up signage that says this is not the detour route or do not use this route, just you get their response, it’s just not going to make any difference. People aren’t going to follow that, unless you completely close Holcomb, which they won’t do, there’s just no way to stop that entire route.

Wylie said Quisenberry’s been waiting for a question too.

Quisenberry said two things to follow up on Avery’s points. I don’t understand the four-way stop at Washington and Holcomb. Washington street going east off of Holcomb is already backed up from Holcomb to M-15. Now if you close off Miller Road and Bluegrass, there’s nowhere they can go except up to Holcomb. And now that’s going to take Holcomb southbound and back it up almost probably to Miller Road, because now there’s nowhere for the cars to go. It’s already blocked up the whole extent of West Washington right there. And it isn’t going to free up any part of the traffic trying to get to M-15 using Holcomb. It’s just going to cause another bottleneck coming southbound on Holcomb. And then trying to turn on to eastbound Washington from north and southbound, it’s going to be a fight. There’s going to be people constantly nosing in and trying to get in there. And there’s no way that that should be a four-way sign because of what it’s going to do to the congestion. It’s going to take Bluegrass and Miller road, compound it, and put it all at Washington, because nobody’s going to continue through south on Holcomb up to Dixie Highway, make a left turn, then go to [M-]15, they’re not going to do that. It’s going to have all four intersections of that, directions of that intersection backed up even further, because there’s nowhere to go. You’re just diverting the problem that they have, which is a problem, to one central point.

Quisenberry said the other thing is that, I don’t know what MDOT was thinking of, and OCR, or the Road Commission, their design of this construction project is resulting in lawsuits by public safety agencies up in the north end of the county. Because emergency vehicles can’t get anywhere on 75, and there’s been several different instances, and one was a fatality, where they couldn’t get help. And now all the public agencies, the first responders, are complaining to MDOT and to OCRC, look what you’ve done. This was a very, very piss poor way that you’ve designed this product. And they can’t correct it. First off, he said they don’t have any money. Well, then they get it wrong, because the bidding process should have included, if they needed to put in an auxiliary road, the bidding process should have had that in there. So, the bidding process was faulty by not allowing a way to have the traffic diverted the way it needed to be. They just made a mess of all of this.

Quisenberry said lastly, they say they can’t put a temporary. Yes, they do. Yes, they can. They do it all the time. They constantly merge roads from one side to the other while they’re working on it. They put a sign up there, and they don’t say, oh, we don’t want to do that, because then when we take it down and the road’s open, they’re going to get confused. Everybody’s going to go south in northbound lanes. No, they won’t. There are many, many construction sites out there where they temporarily divert traffic one way or the other, and then when it’s done, they correct it. So, whoever it is that’s telling you, it’s probably the same people that made the brilliant decision to set up this thing the way that it is right now. And the responses that we’re trying to suggest is, makes sense. Not four-way sign, oh, we don’t want to trick people later on, and a month after we take it down, somebody’s going to think, first off, if there is going to be anybody that is going to be confused, what are they going to be confused about? They’re going to stop because they used to, all right? That’s not going to be a problem. Smith said it’s the people coming off of Holcomb, or off of Washington, excuse me, on Holcomb. They think that that car is going to stop, because it used to. But now there’s no longer a stop sign, and that guy’s going to sail right through the intersection. Quisenberry said people coming off Washington, when they get to Holcomb, they realize Holcomb has right-of-way both ways. They don’t stop.

Smith said we’d have to have signage, which we actually have there now. It says, crossroad does not stop. Quisenberry said yeah, and it works. Smith said but we’d have to have bigger signage, I think, temporarily at least. It is doable, I think. I don’t disagree. It could be done on a temporary basis, but that’s their man. Quisenberry said I totally disagree that they cannot do something like that on a temporary basis at a construction site. It’s done all the time.

Jones said well, the counter to add on to that, in terms of a counterpoint, the majority of this influx of traffic of people pulling the boneheaded moves are people that are being forced to take the detour. When the detour goes away, ostensibly those people would go away with the four-way stop. So, we can sit here and what-if about, you know, future problems and all that, but we have to come to some sort of solution because we have literally had this conversation, I think, four meetings in a row. Smith said yup. Jones said like almost word for word. Quisenberry said my thought is definitely not a four-way stop at Washington and Holcomb. That is only going to create another bigger problem.

Smith said OK, then I guess I’m going to ask the council to vote on this. Can we amend the agenda to vote on that tonight? I need a decision on that – Wylie said OK – (continuing), Smith said because I need to stop that, and I need to do it now. Wylie said do we want to amend the agenda. Quisenberry said is that how we do it? Ryan said yes, it’s gotta be amended. Wylie said I guess we amend this.

Smith said just to finish my thought, it was, to make that a four-way stop was just to give people from all directions a chance to get across. Yes, they’re going to have to come to a stop. Maybe it’ll back up some, but it gives everybody a fair chance. Right now, when I come to work in the morning, when I come up to, up Holcomb to turn right onto Washington, there are cars just backed up on coming south on Holcomb with their left turn signal on. I always let one, even two in front of me, but not everybody does. They’re in such a hurry, and so it’s backed up already a long ways. It’s not just blowing through freely. They’re already stopped there because there’s so many. I’d say in the morning, more than 50% of the cars are trying to turn left rather than go straight. So, I don’t know that it’s going to change a lot by making that a four-way stop in terms of the backup going up Holcomb, but that’s just my observation.

Wylie said my recollection about the original idea was it was a safety concern because some people who are heading south on Holcomb were recklessly making a left-hand turn and that they were at risk, and I believe that was why the original suggestion was made. Avery said a couple of things, too. People were trying to work around the person that was waiting to turn left on the southbound Holcomb onto Washington, and they were driving on their front lawn. Smith said on their grass. Avery said the grass, I mean, I guess my question for Quisenberry, are you more concerned about the permanent nature of the four-way stop? Quisenberry said yes. Avery said so, after the construction is done in November, you don’t want it to be a four-way? Quisenberry said so, because Holcomb, after the construction, when it goes back to the way it was, it’s gone.

Avery said to Smith’s point, I do like the fact that something’s slowing people down. Because, you know, they all drive through there at 40 plus miles per hour and they’re not getting slowed down at any point. Literally from Dixie, they can go all the way down to Miller before they hit a stop sign, so they come rolling through. It’s a thought that people are going to have to stop, especially the southbound. Quisenberry said I think that I don’t like the idea of it being even a temporary four-way stop, because I think it’s going to end with the closing of Miller and Bluegrass. It’s just going to exacerbate that intersection terribly. Avery said oh, I agree. Quisenberry said if it has to, because of the mess that they made and our options are very limited, then a four-way stop is maybe probably the best solution, but it needs to just be temporary. I think temporary. I don’t know that, sure, it would slow them down a bit again, but – Avery said I think we’ve had discussions with the road commission previously about that intersection and making it four-way, and they’ve been very – Smith said hesitant – Avery said hesitant. I guess that’s a good word. Wylie said that’s good.

Wylie recognized Jones for a comment.

Jones said I was just going to say, instead of pushing into the motion, I mean, I know I said we need to act, but he said he’s going to present it at the next meeting, so I think that out of respect for him and his proposal, like, instead of making a motion, like, let’s then vote on it, we could have him actually present the information that he has and do it in the proper way. You’re looking at me. Yeah, okay.

(To Smith), Ryan said and is it possible, I know they said they don’t want to make it permanent, they’d change it, but that seems like a pretty arbitrary. Jones said yeah. Ryan said maybe you could go back and say, well, if we do the four-way now because of the existing circumstances, we have busy closures, how about when it’s November and it goes back to normal, put some signage and turn it back to the two-way stop, not four-way? Jones said and what you said about having our DPW [Department of Public Works], because you said we have the signage and that our DPW could do it, so, I mean, we’re really, we’ve got everything to get, you know, to counter their – Avery said yeah, I think if we put something up that said four-way stop, temporary four-way stop during construction on a sign, so no one’s fooled by the fact that it’s permanent.

Wylie said but you said you needed a decision before you talked to – Smith said they’re getting close to making this change – Wylie said OK – (continuing), Smith said any day now, but I can put the stop to it. What was coming back to the next meeting was the decision about closing Miller. That I need a council vote on. But I can ask that they delay this four-way stop until also till after the June 9th meeting, where we’ll vote on this too, the four-way and the closing of Miller on June 9th. We can do both of those in that meeting. In the meantime, I’ll ask again, why can’t this be temporary? They were pretty adamant when I talked to them last time, but I can re-address it with them. I can ask Oakland County Road Commission, or, MDOT won’t do it, but maybe the road commission will actually show up before a meeting and have them tell you why they don’t like temporary changes.

Wylie recognized Forte for a comment.

Forte said yeah, respectfully, I disagree with you. I’ve tried to cross there as a pedestrian a lot, and it’s very dangerous. People don’t stop, or it looks like they’re going to stop, and they don’t. And I also like the four-way stop, because I come left-bound towards Washington a lot. And some people are nice and want you in, but other times you’re risking it. And it’s really scary. So, for those two reasons, I like the long-term four-way stop. I agree, it gets really fast in there sometimes. And even running. I mean, I’m super-fast, so I don’t have to worry about it too much. But, like, even sometimes, it’s, like, narrow with people going as fast as they can just to get to that next destination. So, I don’t know. For those reasons, again, respectfully, I disagree. So, I don’t know. I’m more in favor of the long-term. But I do see everyone’s point. I think this is going to be a cost burden, no matter how you shake it down.

Wylie said do we need to delay it? Forte said yeah. Wylie said do we need to delay it? Quisenberry has brought up that you – Avery said yeah I don’t know what Smith’s going to present to us in two weeks – Wylie said right, right –  (continuing), Avery said that would add any more information than what we already have, as far as the four-way stop.

Jones said well, I mean, my question is, if we vote on it tonight, are we actually going to install it? Are we going to go ahead and do it, or are we just going to go ahead? (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Jones said we’re voting to go ask. OK. To ask.

Wylie said hang on, we’re still, I know people are waiting, but – Jones said no, I’m good.

Rodgers said you’ve already asked a question, right? You’ve already asked, and you’re going to do it, barring us saying no. But if we just go away with it, if you just move on like you planned, they were going to install it? Smith said correct. Rodgers said OK.

Wylie said you would need to have a unanimous vote to change the agenda. So, I’d say, based on what I’m hearing, it’s not going to happen tonight. You’re not going to change the agenda tonight. And I’m in favor of keeping the four-way stop. I don’t see what’s going to happen between now and our next meeting that I would vote something differently if we want to hold off.

Quisenberry said and the four-way stop very well might be a solution. My main objection – (Wylie made an unintelligible comment) – (continuing), Quisenberry said is going to be closing both Bluegrass and Miller and pushing everything to that intersection. Wylie said I get that. I understand. Avery said so, we can vote the four-way tonight, I think. Wylie said yeah, we can do that. We can change the agenda to do that.

Wylie said OK, I make a motion to change the agenda to add a, has to be a resolution? No, it doesn’t have to be a resolution. Ryan said no. Wylie said to make a motion to – Smith said change the agenda. Wylie said yeah, that’s right. I’m just making a motion to change the agenda. And I need a second.

Ryan said 9B, right? Wylie said that would have to be 9B, yes. Ryan said four-way stop, but, but first we have to change the agenda. Ryan said right, but the topic is – Wylie said OK, so the agenda change would be to add a four-way stop with the Oakland County Road Commission’s permission to a four-way stop at West Washington and Holcomb. Casey said temporarily. Wylie said so, I need a second. Avery said no permanent. They’ve said that they’re not going to do it temporarily. Wylie I didn’t say temporary. They may override us. I will make my, my motion will be for temporary. But I need a second to change the agenda first.

Motion to change the agenda to add a new Item #9B by Wylie; second Jones.

Motion to change the agenda passed by unanimous voice vote.

Wylie said OK, so we are changing the agenda.

New Item B – Motion: Install a Temporary Four-Way Stop at West Washington and Holcomb (video time mark 0:34:55):

Wylie said so, the motion is to install a temporary four-way stop at West Washington and Holcomb. Avery said the motion should be to request that the Road Commission install a four-way stop. Wylie said OK, my motion is amended to request that the Road Commission install a four-way stop at West Washington and Holcomb. And I need a second on that. Casey said on a temporary basis. Wylie said temporary basis. Thank you.

Motion by Wylie; second Jones.

Wylie said any discussion on that.

Rodgers said if they say no, it can’t be temporary, then we just – Smith said that’s exactly where I was going. I need guidance. If they say no, it can’t be temporary, it’s either permanent or no deal at all, which is what I suspect they’ll say. I can argue against it, but I suspect that’s what they’ll say. Quisenberry said if they say it can’t be temporary, ask for some sort of documentation or proof to say it can’t, because it’s done at construction sites all the time. Smith said I agree. I see it all the time, everywhere. Wylie said last meeting, you brought that up, that they were pushing back, they were concerned about how people would react to it afterwards.

Wylie said any other discussion from council.

No discussion.

Wylie said anything from the public. This is on just this agenda item right now, about putting the four-way stop.

The motion to add a temporary four-way stop sign at West Washington and Holcomb was approved by unanimous voice vote.

Wylie said the motion is passed. Thank you.

Smith said so, who first? Wylie said it was Wylie and Jones to change the agenda, and Wylie and Jones made the motion for that, first and second for that motion. Smith said yes. Wylie said OK.

[Discussion on Item A – Traffic Congestion in the City due to I-75 Construction Detours Resumed – video time mark 0:36:45]

Wylie said OK, we are still on our discussion for traffic congestion, and I’ve had some people in the audience raising their hands, so let’s take some of that.

Wylie recognized Chet Pardee for a comment and said and by the way, I am going to really impose the three minutes tonight, because I, anybody who goes over three minutes, I’m going to stop you.

Pardee said I won’t take three minutes to deal with this. Every day I utilize the four-way stop at Miller and Holcomb, and it seems like 99% of the people understand it goes counterclockwise, and you take your turn. Now, I haven’t made any kind of a judgment about what’s going to happen at the four-way stop in Washington, but I like that because at least the lead vehicle gets his turn to get where he needs to be. I don’t know if we’re going to have to educate the people in terms of this is the practice of a four-way stop or not. That’s my own experience. But it works like a charm at Miller. My question is, how do people on Miller and Bluegrass get to their homes and from their homes? If the road is closed. Smith said from M-15. Pardee said huh. Smith said from M-15. I guess you could come down Glenburnie, but we’re not allowed to be close to – Pardee said no. Really, you’re closing both ends of Glenburnie. Smith said no, we’d just be closing the Holcomb end of both Bluegrass and Miller. So, both roads, to get to their homes, they’d have to come in from M-15. Wylie said oh, OK. (To Pardee), Wylie said are you all set? Pardee said yes.

Wylie said anybody else have comments on this agenda item on traffic congestion in the city. I got Jody [no last name provided] and then Robert [no last name provided].

Jody said could they, there’s no signage at Davisburg Road and Dixie Highway. Could they put some signage there that says, gonna be horrible ahead? Smith said detour straight, not left, straight. Could they even, again, it’s about how do you incentivize them to go what direction. There is a whole mindset on this. You shorten the left turn arrow from Dixie on to Davisburg Road making it more painful to go that route. There are things they can do along those lines, and we didn’t actually get that far in the proposal, but you could do that, yes. The signage, people just ignore the signage. That’s clear. So, I think you almost have to do physical actions like shortening or lengthening arrows to get people to go where you want them to go. Wyle said thank you.

(To Robert), Wylie said I’m sorry, did you have something else? Robert said yeah, I was going to say, I mean, to Smith’s point, I drive both of them quite a few times a day, and it’s people behind them, they try to make a left turn on Bluegrass, and they realize it’s closed, so they go to Miller, and they see the traffic, and then they’ll just keep on going straight to Washington. So, even though it might be a temporary, this may sound biased, but a temporary pain, people will eventually shift all their items to the driving to Dixie. But the biggest concern is still a lot of semi-trucks. I mean, throughout the day, I counted today just on a Ring camera, within an hour, probably about 25 semi-trucks. And I know, like, the city kind of needs some money, so I don’t know if we can just have a dedicated weight master there, because according to Google, I mean, it’s like a $500 to $1,000 fine – Smith said right – (continuing), Robert said and I don’t know how much the city gets out of that, but I mean, it’s 50% or something like that, right? I mean, for one hour, I saw probably close to $5 to $10 grand worth of people just driving down Miller. I mean, that’s some easy money right there. So why doesn’t (unintelligible) make lemonade? Smith  said yeah, you think, well, it takes some of that money to pay the officer, but they say they only have so much. They have one weight master on a given shift, and he’s got to do the whole township, so. Robert said can we, like, pay? I mean, because I’m pretty sure, like, if we took it out of our fund or whatever, it would come back in multiples. Jones said well, they’re already asking us for an increase. Robert said well, I mean, at that point, but I mean, for the time being or something. Avery said yeah, but also, I think the reality of it is, they’re going to pull a truck over. Where exactly are they going to do that? Robert said they pull them off on M-15. So, they make a left turn, and then they call, and then they pull them off. Avery said OK, that’s cool. Robert said so, I mean, it’s just a thought to bring more income, unfortunately. Avery said well, that means we have to keep Miller open, because we want to lure them down. Robert said at some point (unintelligible). It’s just, because that road is, it’s ridiculous. I’ve never seen it like that before. (To Robert), Wylie said all set. Robert said yeah.

Wylie said anybody else with comments on this discussion, on this item.

Wylie recognized Cara Catallo for a comment.

Catallo said well, he just kind of reminded me of the notion of, if the state and the county are doing this to us, it seems as though they should help repair the roads afterward. I don’t know how to get that ball rolling, but it just seems like – Smith said that comment has been, has been brought up in a couple of the meetings, and MDOT is not opposed to it. They have not said no. They just haven’t said yes either, but they just sit there quietly. So, I think that is a possibility, that we could get some compensation for the damage to Miller Road. It’s already in bad shape. This is making it worse. My bigger concern is the west, I’m sorry, the east end of Miller. That’s a newer roadway. I hate to see that getting damaged, because we won’t have money to rebuild Miller on that end for quite a few years, so, but I will pursue that. As time permits, we know that that discussion is going to happen closer to the end of the construction.

Wylie said OK, thank you. Anybody else with comments? Council or public?

No comments.

Agenda Item #10, New Business (video time mark 0:43:08):

Item A – Resolution: Oakland County Assessing Agreement (video time mark 0:43:12):

• • Resolution – Oakland County Assessing Services Contract (page 20/67 of the council packet)
  • Contract for Oakland County Equalization Division Assistance for Real and Personal Property Assessment Administration Services With City of the Village of Clarkston (page 21/67 of the council packet)
  • Exhibit A – Hourly Rate by Position Type (page 43/67 of the council packet)

Wylie said OK. Let’s move on to Item #10A. It’s a resolution, Oakland County Assessing Agreement.

(Wylie read the resolution.)

Wylie said and the agreement is included. So, this is a resolution, and I will need somebody on council to resolve, and second, and then we can have a discussion.

Motion by Avery; second Jones.

Wylie said and discussion from council.

Avery said I assume Tom [city attorney Tom Ryan] has read it over, and it says what you say. Ryan said well, paragraph 11 says a 90-day out. So, we have to give 90 days’ notice. So, if we approve this contract, it’s supposed to be hopefully for a year, until I get things organized. So, somebody has to make a note 90 days before July 1st of next year or by June 30th. If we’re going to be out of this and be with Independence, we’ll need to notify the county. Paragraph 11.

Wylie said OK. This is under the heading cancellation or termination of this contract. Ryan said correct. It says it’s a three-year contract, but this paragraph says everything notwithstanding, this is the language that controls for cancellation or termination.

Wylie said OK. Anybody else on council?

Jones said yes. The six-month extension is at the existing rate, and then after six months, it rolls into the new if we don’t sign a different thing. Smith said yes, but late this afternoon when I got word, I followed up with the county to ask them, will they approve the six-month extension, and they said we will approve a two-month extension. Wylie said oh, two month. Smith said so, they want the money to start rolling. They don’t want to wait six months. So. So that, if anything, that more emphasizes the importance of approving a one-year after which 90 days beforehand we exit. All things being equal, if we can get a workable agreement with the township to do our assessing, that’s the big assumption here, that we stay with the county for year one. I don’t think two months is going to be enough time to get all our ducks in a row. It’s definitely not as far as the June or July tax bill. So, it just reemphasizes even more the need to go through with this with a plan of staying with the county for one year and then exiting the agreement 90 days beforehand.

Wylie said anybody else.

Jones said but we stay with them for a year, but if we find something before then we’ll put in the termination. Smith said we could, absolutely. Jones said yeah.

Rodgers said so, are we looking at anything besides the township because they have, they just recently lost one of their assessors, they took on Springfield. Their assessor that they have now has never done this before even though he’s a level four, he’s never done this before. He started in January. You know, he’s got a lot of showing to do before I would feel comfortable handing him yet another city. We don’t know how much they were going to cost us. I think they charged Springfield something like $100,000. I don’t know what an assessor goes for, a level four assessor, but that’s a huge thing for us. You have to have a good assessor and somebody that can handle anything new coming into the township or town. So, are we looking at any other avenues besides going with Independence Township or the county?

Smith said well, that’s another benefit of the one-year extension. Granted, we’re going to pay a 50% year-over-year increase to stay with the county for that one year, from $8,000 to $12,000. But it’s also a good opportunity for the new township assessor, assuming he’s the interim, but if he becomes the permanent, he’s going to have to thoroughly prove his ability to do the work. My understanding is Springfield is signing with him to start immediately, so that’s a good opportunity for us to work with Independence and actually Springfield to see how it’s going. Phyle is very confident that this will work out, so we’re definitely interested in that route, but in this one year that would give us the opportunity to investigate other options as well. I think in one year’s time we’ll know whether this Greg [Babb] is able to do the, township Greg, assessing, he’s able to do the job. It’s a lot to put on his plate and he’s relatively new. Rodgers said that’s why I think we should probably look at other things within that time period too, so that we don’t wait until this time next year and be like oh no, he’s not doing a great job, so we better find somebody again. Avery said or we stick with the county again. Rodgers said right, pay their extra money again. Smith said and maybe we have to. Rodgers said right, but we should probably look into, like I think we talked about that at the last meeting, like a private assessor or our own assessor or something like that. Smith said it’s a lot to do if you don’t have connections. An individual to do that would be challenging for anybody to do that, but we will definitely look at other options now that we have more time. Smith said we did get, again late this afternoon I got an email from Independence Township giving us their price structure. They would be almost exactly at the same price we’re paying now, a little over $8,000. So, the price is certainly attractive, but we have to make sure the service is there as well. Wylie said and we have confidence.

[There are companies that do assessing for mostly small municipalities around the state, e.g., https://wcaassessing.com/. They have a long list of cities and townships they do assessing for. Smith hasn’t looked into this at all or he would know that there are companies like this available.]

Wylie recognized Quisenberry for a comment.

Quisenberry said yeah, first off for Greg [Coté, treasurer] how many land parcels do we have? Coté said land parcels. Quisenberry said that are being assessed. How many properties or parcels are there? Coté said about 552 parcels. Quisenberry said 552. Casey said how many. Jones said 552. Quisenberry said it’s just trying to do some figuring with cost per parcel with assessing costs and looking at some of our neighbors. Groveland uses Thompson Property Tax Consulting. Their current price with the county, with them, is $43,000. And it breaks down to about $16.22 per parcel. The $43,000 that they’re getting from Thompson, the county was going to charge them $64,000 and then $84,000 and then $111,000 up for the next three years. Those are high numbers but then again, they have 26, almost 2,700 parcels. So, what I was trying to compare apples and apples if the county is charging us $8,600 for 522 parcels what does that break down to per parcel? Because that’s the best way to compare what these private places are charging as opposed to the county. And I didn’t factor in what Independence was going to be charging us.

[The 2025 Oakland County equalization report shows 42 commercial real property parcels, 378 residential parcels, 118 commercial personal property parcels, and 2 utility personal property parcels. Total parcels, real and personal=540 parcels. The different nature of the parcels makes a difference in how much work must be done for each.]

Ryan said isn’t the current amount like, what, $14 a parcel? Coté said yeah, $15 a parcel. Ryan said $15 a parcel for the county right now. Quisenberry said $15. That’s going to go up. Ryan said yeah. But right now it’s like $15. Quisenberry said it will, Groveland is being charged the new rate $16.22, Brandon, where did I have that, Brandon’s is about the same. Holly is $17 and Rose is $17, both Rose and Holly are $17. You said ours was $15? Ryan said $15. Avery said currently. Quisenberry said currently. Ryan said but that’s until June 30. Casey said but it will go up to $22 or $23 next year. Quisenberry said according to Groveland and Brandon’s there were $15 and $16, with, that’s the new price.

Wylie said so, are you saying you prefer not to sign the contract with Oakland County tonight? Quisenberry said well, when we were in the budget committee we were having some discussion about this and Coté was saying that he had some anxiety over not going with the county because it was going to hinder him getting the notices out in time. Wylie said for the tax bills, right. Avery said for this, yeah. Quisenberry said yes. If we have two more months of the rate that we have right now, is, will the two months help you accomplish the taxing and still be able to give us an opportunity to use somebody else? Coté said no. Wylie said he can’t do it.

Wylie said so, it sounds like the information you have would be really good for what we’re looking for if we decide to go with the county for another year, you have some good information for looking ahead to who we would be selecting as our choosing for some assessing? Quisenberry said certainly, an independent assessing company appears to be doing all these four other townships and they’re doing it cheaper than the county. I don’t know whether they could do it cheaper than Independence because I don’t know what Independence is going to charge us.

Wylie asked Coté if he had something he wanted to say. Coté said no, I’m not so worried. It’s quality that matters.

Avery said yeah, what are we getting for that money? Wylie said right. Quisenberry said well, the Brandon Township Supervisor said we’ve been using this Thompson place for a couple years and we’re very happy with them. Coté said and that’s something we can consider.

(To Coté), Avery said well,  how soon could we look. Coté said well, I have to have these bills out by June 18th. I have to have my tax numbers and everything ready to go. Avery said yeah, but our current contract with the county ends on June 30th. Coté said correct. Avery said so, if we extended that to August 30th and then had someone in place after that time is that OK or is that (unintelligible)? Pardee said the next tax bill is in November. Coté said no, this will cover July and the winter tax bill. Pardee said and so, the one after that? Coté said yeah, it would be a full year. Avery said yeah, so once you get the tax bills out then you’re happy? Coté said I’m a happy camper yes.

Avery said OK, so back to what Jones was saying is that if the county is willing to extend it for two months that doesn’t mean we can’t still sign the contract if we feel like we’re just not comfortable with what we found out about these other places but at least it gives us a window to, you know, look at it seems to me. Smith said yeah.

(To Quisenberry), Smith said on the screen are the Independence Township rates that it’s given to me. Quisenberry said does it break down the cost per parcel? Smith said yep, $16.05 for real property and $14.27 for personal property. That is very close to the $8,000, the $8,100 something like that we’re paying today. Coté agreed.

Wylie said anybody else on council questions comments on this discussion item or this item resolution. Wylie said hang on. Did somebody say yes?

Avery said yeah, I was going to say my preference is to extend it for two months. Why take, why sign it for a year? I know we can give him 90 days’ notice and cut the cord I guess but we can also do that two months removed. It puts Smith under a little bit of time constraint if he’s comfortable with that. Wylie said so, two months puts it to August 30th? Do I have my math right? Quisenberry agreed.

Smith said the question becomes do they still want me to sign a contract or will they let me wait until August 25th or whatever to sign a contract and submit it? Wylie said it looks like council is getting you in trouble. Jones said well, I mean operating the same amount of faith they’re operating with us. Avery said yeah, I mean we could approve the contract and then sign it and then once we figure it out, we just have to give them 90 days’ notice.

Casey said I think that’s the way to go. (To Casey), Wylie said which way. Casey said sign the contract and we’ll figure it out and then if we have to we opt out of the contract. Wylie said OK.

Wylie said anybody else on council.

Casey said with 90 days’ notice I think. Right. Ryan said yeah. Casey said yeah.

Quisenberry said so, if we, through July/August/September, start getting some quotes and prices from some of these other independent assessing places and then we like them we could say September 15th whatever, arbitrarily, give them the 90 days and then we’re out from underneath the county comes January. Avery and Smith agreed. Wylie said that would be a lot of discussion through the summer, I think. Quisenberry said and that two months period, well, that two months period we’d be paying the current rate not the added rate. Is that right? Smith said yes (unintelligible). Quisenberry said but then that’s nothing to say that after the two-month period when we give them the 90-day notice they’re not going to bill us for the new rate for those 90 days but there’s nothing we can do about that. (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Quisenberry said nothing we can do about that. Jones said we would have signed the contract. Casey said I think we need some stability to get our ducks in a row to make the change. Wylie said right.

Wylie said anybody else on council.

No comment.

Wylie said the public

Wylie asked Pardee if he wanted to say something.

Pardee said I think it was the last meeting we talked about Commerce declining Independence Township. Smith said that’s what I’ve heard. Nothing official. Pardee said I’d call Commerce and find out how they’re going to get it done if they decided not to use Independence Township. Smith said right. That could be part of the whole evaluation of whether or not we want to go with Independence or some other source. Avery said and probably our own feedback. Smith said we can pass that question.

(Speaking to a man sitting next to him, later identified as David from Fleiss and Vandenbrink engineering firm), Pardee said are you willing to tell us about anybody else that said no? The man said (unintelligible). I just look like I play it on TV. Smith said no, I have not heard anybody else say no.

Wylie said anybody else in the public with anything on this resolution.

No comments.

Quisenberry said so, are we going to be voting on a two month extension? Wylie said we are voting on right now as it states we are voting on accepting this. Smith said signing it. Yes. Wylie said OK. Casey said yes. Wylie said let’s take a vote.

(To Smith), Wylie said you do the roll call please. Smith said we got a first and second. Wylie said we had Avery made the resolution and Jones seconded. Smith said OK.

Forte, Casey, Avery, Wylie, Rodgers, and Jones voted yes.

Quisenberry voted no.

Wylie said OK, so the resolution is adopted. Thank you.

Item B – Resolution: MDOT [Michigan Department of Transportation] Category B Grant Application (video time mark 1:00:12):

• • City of the Village of Clarkston, Resolution No. 20250019 – To Establish a Request for Funding, Designate an Agent, Attest to the Existence of Funds and Commit to Implementing Maintenance Program for the Rehabilitation of E. Church Street Funded by the Transportation Economic Development Fund Category B Program (page 44/67 of the council packet)
  • Professional Services Agreement, Fleis & Vendenbrink Engineering, Inc.
  • Engineer’s Opinion of Costs (page 49/67 of the council packet)

Wylie said next we have Item #10B, Resolution, MDOT Category B Grant Application. I’m going to read the resolution.

(Wylie read the resolution.)

Wylie said there’s nobody absent. The following, I’m going to read this resolution before we do a resolution.

(Wylie read the resolution.)

Wylie said and I will need a resolution and then a second from somebody on city council.

Resolution by Jones; second Rodgers.

Wylie said and we’ll have a discussion from council members first. (To Smith), Wylie said or, maybe, I’m sorry, you probably want to say something before you have a discussion.

Smith said well, yes. So, this is a proposal to obtain funding to repave Church Street, which is one of the top priorities. It’s actually the top priority in terms of road condition in the city. We’re looking at Miller Road and East Church. Overlook is also on the list. Those are the three that we’re looking to repave here. And East Church is at the top of the list. So, this is a grant application we have filed for previously through MDOT. And I know you might say that some of their funds are up in the air. I’m not sure. I haven’t heard that to be the case. But the Category B grant is for local roads for small communities under 10,000 residents. So, this fits well with our municipality. We’re going to try it again. The difference this time is I’m working, instead of working with HRC [Hubbell, Roth & Clark], who applied previously twice and did not get the approval, this time I’m working with engineering firm Fleiss and Vandenbrink (F&V). And David is here as a representative of F&V. And so, we can ask him questions.

Smith said but the thought was kind of two-part thought. One is this is a grant application I’d like to try for again. It’s 50%, free money. This is going to be an expensive project. The road is in bad shape and it’s apparent that there’s some substructure work below the road. We haven’t done any core samples yet, but we think this is going to be a pretty sizable project. Fleiss and Vandenbrink has come out and done an assessment on the cost. They’re doing all of this completely free to the city. They would like to work with the city, so they’re doing this free to the city and helping us apply for this grant. This is the second part of my thought was not only the expense, but our goal to get MDOT grant money. But also, as a way of, for me, kind of assessing F&V as a possible future engineering firm for the city. And I don’t well, enough said on that. I think it’s a great opportunity in a project that won’t cost us any money for Fleiss and Vandenbrink to kind of prove their abilities to manage a project like this. So they are, they filled out the application. They’ve come out and done a cost assessment. Looked at the situation. They are helping us with this grant application, and they put together the cost of doing all this.

Smith said so, what do they get out of this? They’re not just doing this out of the goodness of their heart. Ultimately, if the project is approved, if the project is not approved, they don’t get a penny. If the project is approved, they would be the engineering firm of record. So, then they would get grant money. The money in the grant, approved grant, there are buckets of money in that grant application that would pay them for their services. So, in my way of looking at this, it’s free to the city either way. If we don’t get the grant application, there’s no charge to the city. If we are approved for the grant application, the fees for engineering and construction management by F&V would be covered by grant funds. Again, no cost to the city.

Smith said we would have to come up with the 50% to pave that road, but we have, Coté and I have been looking at the timetable of all this and with parking revenue coming in, we will have that $129,450. That’s not a problem. We kind of projected out where we would be. The other thing I want to point out is if this is approved, this would be a 2026 project, not a 2025. We have to do some thorough pothole patching to get us through another year, but this would be a 2026 project, and it would be a full rebuild, not just a mill and filled. This is a full rebuild of the roadway. So, I think it’s a great project. Not only do we get grant money from the state, but we also get an ability to assess F&V as a future engineering firm for the city. No hard feelings against HRC, but F&V is definitely more aggressive and wanting to help us and just, you know, just I think challenging the status quo more so than HRC has been in the last few years. So that’s the introduction and if you have any questions, council.

Wylie said before we get into any kind of discussion, Quisenberry just noticed something we need to probably amend this resolution where it says present, nays, absent. We don’t use present. We say yay or yes. I think it needs this because present means, it’s a different meaning. I just want to amend it. Avery said you vote yes or no. Wylie said if the resolution says that, we don’t want it to go on. Smith said you are just saying this should probably say yes. Wylie said I don’t know. Do we need an amendment to change that? Since the resolution’s already been made as this is written. Avery said well, the contract needs to be changed. Smith said so, down at the bottom. Ryan said yeah, right. Smith said that should say yes or aye. Ryan said it should say yeah, you’re right. We’ll just move to amend the resolution.

(To Rodgers), Wylie said would you, I move to amend the resolution. Are you OK. Rodgers said yeah. Wylie said yeah, and Jones. Jones said yep.

Wylie said do we have to vote on it? Ryan said yes, sir, yes, ma’am. Wylie said oh, yeah. It also says, well, that’s actually, that’s OK. Where it says present and absent. We can say who’s here. (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Wylie said we actually say that. That’s OK.

Wylie said so, I move to amend the resolution where it says yes, council members.

The motion to amend the resolution passed by unanimous voice vote.

Wylie said that’s changed. That’s amended.

Wylie said OK, discussion from council members on this resolution.

Smith said Ryan has reviewed the F&V service agreement and Ryan, I know you sent me some comments this afternoon. Ryan said right, because I know, I know, I’m not familiar with this grant necessarily, but I know a lot of grants do not include engineering costs or administrative fees. That’s on the nickel of the community. So, what you said tonight is that that’s not the case here. I mean, is that what this grant will allow? Because the contract, the service contract says it’s going to be the city’s responsibility to compensate, you know, the engineer for their work, which obviously it is if the grant gets approved. But, I mean, have you gotten any kind of – I know there’s a budget of $258,000. What’s, like what’s the typical engineering fee going to be to manage a contract like this? Isn’t that our nickel to pay for that? I mean, normally, the grants I know of don’t, don’t pay for engineering or that sort of thing. So that was my question I had.

(To David DeLay), Smith said I’ll turn that question to you. I know there is, there are some line items in this estimate you put together. DeLay said yes.

(To DeLay), Wylie said do you mind introducing yourself to everybody. Delay said I can stand up. Wylie said if you want to stand at the podium, if you feel more comfortable. That’s probably helpful.

DeLay said I’m Dave DeLay from Fleiss and Vandenbrink. Smith did a great job with the overview. I have very little to add as far as the technical pieces of that. To the question of whether or not we’re taking a fee from the city or the grant, it’s a pot of money where the city is required to match the grant funding. So, to pay the engineering fee, whether it’s on the city’s dime or the grant’s dime, is kind of a loophole because 50% of the funding is coming from the state that wouldn’t already be coming into the city’s funding bucket.

Ryan said just to that point, sir, I’m sorry, but, but I mean, I look at your line item. There’s nothing in here about engineering costs or management fees to manage the project. DeLay said the management fee for the project I believe we put in at 20%, which is typically standard for engineering. Ryan said but where does that show up on the paperwork? I believe what you have is the Murrell [?] estimate, and that is the standard line item for reconstruction minus engineering fees. Ryan said OK, so, but where does this grant, so if it’s 20%, then that’s what, $56,000 for engineering fees? DeLay said I think it’s about $35,000 in engineering fees. I can run the numbers real quick here. Ryan said I thought it was $250. $235 is the number, so that’s $46? Avery said $47. Ryan said $47. DeLay said run the calculation here. $47. So, the match is – Ryan said I mean, all I’m saying is that this is the project cost to do the project. The engineering, the management of the project, that’s going to be extra. DeLay said correct. Ryan said so, are you saying that the city’s going to get 50% of whatever your administrative and project costs are to be reimbursed? DeLay said depends on, well, you can think about it in one of two ways. So, the grant is funding roughly $129,450 is what we’re applying for, which would not already be going to this road project. So, whether or not this road is being repaired, it would be an administrative fee from an engineering firm to put into it at that $256,000. Our fees for engineering are 40%. Ryan said 20%. DeLay said I’m sorry, 20%, which would be roughly around $45,000. Those come out of the project as a total. So, the project wouldn’t go without the grant funding.

Avery said well, I understand that. I guess what I think Ryan’s getting at is when it says $235,500 here, or $235,400, in reality it’s $275,000, $280,000. And if we get a grant for $129,000, which is what we’re applying for, we’re on the hook for the $129,000 plus – Quisenberry said $45 – Rodgers said yeah – (continuing), Avery said the engineering fee. Which I’m not saying is wrong, but it’s good to know the numbers. Ryan said right.

Ryan said so, this is $129,000 plus $47,000 – Avery said yeah – (continuing), Ryan said which would be the city’s, if everything goes well. Avery said yeah. Ryan said so that’s what we’re signing up for. So, it’s 50% of the project cost, but the city has to, you know, somebody’s got to engineer, manage this thing, and that’s for it. So that’s just to let everybody know what the total all-in cost of the city is. $129,500, or $4,000 plus $47,000, apparently. Wylie said OK, thank you. DeLay said $175,000, right? Avery said yeah, sounds about right to me. Coté said yeah, we need to know our exposure on that. Ryan said plus you may not get the grant anyway, but at least you know what you’re in for if you get it.

Rodgers said and do we have money for that? Do we have the extra $45,000? Avery said in the next year we’re going to have to get it. Smith said within the next year. We don’t have it today, but within the next year, yes, we would have that through parking.

Avery said when will we know whether we get approved or something like that? DeLay I believe they come out with funding in the fall for this. The deadline for application is June 12th. They do, it’s a fiscal year 2026 project, so they try to give a reasonable amount of notification time to the communities that are awarded it in order for them to decide whether or not they’re going to move forward with the project. Avery said OK.

Avery said as far as HRC, what was their, what would be their going rate? Or have we not, how has that worked in the past? With road reconstruction, that sort of thing? Smith said you mean an hourly fee. Avery said whatever their fee was. I mean, have we had to use an engineer before to redo any of our roads? Smith said we’ve used HRC to redo Depot Road for example. Avery said and they charge just an hourly rate? Is that how they did it? Smith said it’s based on an hourly rate, yes. Avery said OK, all right. I’m just trying to see if the 20% is – Smith said comparable – standard. Smith said yup. I think it is very comparable, but it’s a good question. I’ll look at that.

Wylie said anybody else have questions for DeLay or Smith.

Wylie recognized Quisenberry for a comment.

(To Smith), Quisenberry said because you said this is next year’s grant, right? Smith said correct. Quisenberry said so, if we are approved and we have to come up like Coté said, we’re going to need to know what our liability is, is it going to be, you said we don’t have this year, we’ll have next year, won’t it actually be the following year? Do we pay afterwards then? Will it be in the, not the ‘25-‘26 fiscal year, but the one after that? Smith said ‘26-‘27. Depending on if you do it before June 30th or not. You can do it either way, depending on where funding falls, if it’s available. Avery said two years. Smith said I think from the state’s perspective it just has to be done in the 2026 calendar year, which could be in either fiscal year. Wylie said OK.

Smith said so, to DeLay’s point, we’re voting tonight on the approval to apply for the grant. If between now and 2026 when this would start, if approved, we could still back out of it. If for some reason we decided not to do it for funding reasons, I know that’s kind of frowned upon. You don’t like to apply for a grant, get the grant, and then say no, thank you. They don’t like that, but – DeLay said I do not believe that there’s any obligation, if you’re awarded grant funding, to go through with it, if you so decide not to. Smith said so, there would be an out later on if council decides that just in the 2027 timeframe, we don’t have enough funding to complete the work, we could still say thanks, but no thanks. Wylie said OK.

Wylie said anybody else on council. Questions for DeLay or Smith?

No comments.

Wylie said and in public. Anybody?

Wylie recognized Pardee for a comment.

Pardee said how far to the east does Church Street go. Smith said to just past the Clarkston United Methodist Church fence there. Just the fence. Well, today it’s where the asphalt stops and turns to dirt. You know, they took up the asphalt. Pardee said so, it doesn’t go all the way to the Renaissance? Avery said well, it does. Smith said it’s close to it, right to the Renaissance start, Methodist Church, and then Renaissance is the line. Avery said well, you’re talking about just the city line is what you’re talking about. The road goes all the way down, and it tees off with a road. Smith said east line. Pardee said and in discussion, I thought I was hearing that we were going to move to the city line. Avery said yes. Smith said but that’s the Methodist Church/Renaissance border.

Wylie said OK. Anybody else in public? Questions or comments?

Wylie recognized Pardee for a comment.

Pardee said so, we got into the proposed budget right now, $70, in the budget that’s going to get reviewed, $70,000. In the – Smith said it’s $70,000 parking, $100,000 out of the local road fund. So, $170,000 total. Pardee said but that included two roads. Smith said two roads, Miller and East Church. Pardee said I was thinking of the East Church portion was assumed to be $70,000. Smith said no, there was no delineation on how much would be East Church, how much would be Miller. It was just a pot of $170,000. Pardee said thank you.

Wylie said anybody else.

No comments.

(To DeLay), Wylie said did you have anything else you wanted to add. DeLay said I just wanted to thank you for your time today. Wylie said thank you.

Wylie said all right, we will take a vote, and (to Smith), Wylie said if you would do the roll call, please. Smith said all right.

Casey, Forte, Jones, Quisenberry, Wylie, Avery, and Rodgers voted yes.

Wylie said OK, the resolution is adopted. Thank you.

Wylie thanked DeLay and recognized him for a comment.

DeLay said thank you for passing the resolution. The next steps, we will finalize the application, submit on behalf of the city, so that was the step that we needed. Appreciate the support on that.

Quisenberry said thank you.

Wylie said now we’re on – (To DeLay), Smith said you don’t have to stay for the rest of the meeting unless you want to. DeLay said well, this is fun. I’m a former councilman myself. Forte said what community. DeLay said Farmington. Wylie said Farmington, OK.

Item C – Motion: Historic District Commission Appointment (video time mark 1:21:25):

• • Motion – Historic District Commission Appointment (page 51/67 of the council packet)

Wylie said Item #10C, motion, Historic District Commission appointment.

(Wylie read the motion.)

Motion by Wylie. Wylie said is there a second or do you want to discuss something first.

Quisenberry said so, this is a month and a half position, right? Wylie said I’m sorry. Quisenberry said and ending June 30th of this year. Wylie said no, is that right? Smith said that’s right. Wylie said oh. Smith said Annette’s [Zemon-Parker’s] term goes through June 30th so then presumably six weeks. Wylie said so then we have to appoint someone or nominate somebody else. Smith said for another two years. Forte said do we know why Zemon-Parker stepped down. Wylie said she expressed being very unhappy with some HDC [Historic District Commission]. Forte said OK.

Forte said and then who’s Kim [Trumbore]? Wylie said Trumbore. She contacted me. She’s had some issues. She’s been before the HDC to get some approvals. I think she may actually be in the process right now of doing something. But she called me a few weeks ago, probably right after our last meeting. And I had also heard from the grapevine that she was interested. Forte asked where Trumbore lives. Wylie said she lives on Main Street. I guess it doesn’t matter if I say it. She lives in the [Melissa and Joe] Luginski’s old house. So, she’s been here for a year. Maybe some of you have probably met her. And she says she has, I’m trying to remember what else she said. I’m sorry. Forte said no, don’t worry. Wylie said I was hoping she would come. She has already been doing some training on historic structures.

(To Cara Catallo), Wylie said have you talked to her about it at all. Catallo said yeah, and I’ve been to some meetings where she’s, she’s been the applicant. And I find her to be thoroughly engaged. And I think that she’d probably be a good fit. Rodgers said and what’s her background? Wylie said she has had a love of historic structures her whole life. She’s almost always lived in them. Oh, here we go. Let me see if I can find her. Forte said sorry, not to put you on the hot seat. Wylie said no, it’s okay.

(Reading), Wylie said I like to volunteer for the HDC. I understand there are vacancies. She mentioned she’s lived in the historic district for a year. I’ve volunteered in many different committees, governance bodies, and non-profits over the course of my life. And I am familiar with Robert’s Rules, as well as the general decorum required for civic engagement. I am currently a member of the Michigan Historic Preservation Network and of the Michigan Historical Society. In addition, I have taken most of the online training offered by the National Park Service’s TPS [Technical Preservation Services]. If approved, I can start my term at the June meeting. If you have any questions, and we did talk on the phone after that.

Wylie said and I agree with your assessment of it. She seems very engaged in this and real interested. And I met her once at a meeting, and from my phone conversation, I think she would be a good choice.

Jones said they did a lovely little thing coming up about a year ago where they did a live performance. They play in a band, and they invited people to come do live music outside. It was like National Play Music on the Porch Day.

Rodgers said so, community – Jones said they’re active in the community, and they’re really nice, so yeah, I mean. Wylie said oh, she’s nice. That’s all I need. Forte said done. Pardee said she likes dogs. Jones said and I was going to say, since no one else seems to be jumping at the bit, we will take the active participants.

Forte said do we have one more spot. Wylie said we have one more spot, because Rob [Hauxwell, HDC Chair] is also resigning, and he’s done June 30th, I think. Smith said June 30^th. Wylie said I have heard someone else is interested, and they haven’t contacted me, so I need to find some contact information so I can get in touch with them. Jones said tell them to get it to Hauxwell. I said tell them to get to Hauxwell. Smith said it doesn’t need to be a chairperson. Wylie said right. They will choose their own chairperson. Smith said we just need an addition. Wylie said OK.

Wylie said any other discussion.

No discussion.

Second Forte.

Wylie said OK, so that was a motion by Wylie; second Forte.

Wylie said any other discussion from council.

No discussion.

Wylie said discussion from the public.

No discussion.

Motion to appoint Kim Trumbore to the HDC passed by unanimous voice vote.

Wylie said Trumbore is appointed.

Forte said will you thank her for volunteering. Wylie said will I thank her. Yes, I will thank her.

Agenda Item #11, Public Hearing: 2025/20326 Fiscal Year Budget Proposal (video time mark 1:26:16):

Wylie said OK. We are now on Item #11, public hearing, 2025-26, fiscal year budget proposal.

Item A – Open the Public Hearing (video time mark 1:26:23):

Wylie said I’m going to open the public meeting, because this is a public meeting, and it’s opened at 8:26 p.m.

Item B – Call to Order (video time mark 1:26:32):

Wylie said and I’m calling the meeting to order at 8:26 p.m.

Item C – Presentation of the Draft 2025/2026 Fiscal Year Budget Proposal (video time mark 1:26:35):

• • Where Do My Tax Dollars Go? (page 53/67 of the council packet)
  • 25/26 Fiscal Year Budget [“]Challenges[”] (page 54/67 of the council packet)
  • Millage Rates (page 56/67 of the council packet)
  • Assessed Value vs Taxable Value (page 57/67 of the council packet)
  • Proposed Fiscal Year 2025-2026 Operational Budget (page 58/67 of the council packet)
  • Proposed Fiscal Year 2025-2026 Capital Project Appropriations (page 61/67 of the council packet)
  • Significant Sources & Uses (page 62/67 of the council packet)
  • FY 24/25 Projected Fund Balance (page 63/67 of the council packet)
  • FY 25/26 Projected Fund Balance (page 64/67 of the council packet)
  • Annual & Hourly Pay Schedule Required by the Appropriations Act [the large salary increases] (page 65/67 of the council packet)
  • Capital Improvement Plan (page 66/67 of the council packet)

Wylie said and we have for Item #11C, a presentation of the draft of 2025-2026 fiscal year budget proposal. And I think Smith and Coté are going to take over at this point.

Jonathan Smith:

Smith said OK, so this is somewhat a continuing discussion from our last council meeting, where we went through the five challenge areas. So, we won’t spend quite as much time on those, but we will cover it.

OK, so the first question always is, where do my tax dollars go? So, this slide is showing that 39 in the lower left corner, I know it’s a little small to read on the screen, but 39.45% of your tax dollars come to the city. The rest go to the schools and the county and so on. On an average taxable value of $186,000, that means $2,837 comes to the city on an annual basis. So, that’s just kind of an overview of that.

So, let’s just recap what I just said we talked about in the last council meeting, was an overview of the five challenge areas. So, we’ll go through these from top to bottom.

Across the top you see the different columns, the final budget, the final number from the current budget, then the initial estimate for the new budget, and then the modified estimate for the new budget. We’ve been able to bring those costs down a little bit. And then the year over year changes.

So, Oakland County Police Services, starting with that, the initial estimate or I’m sorry, the current cost is $157,000, that’s proposed to go to $181,000. With, working with Independence Township, we were able to get that down slightly to $178,000. That’s still a $21,000 year over year increase, but it’s something we feel strongly we have to do. There are really no options here as far as police coverage at this time. Will somebody come forward, a community come forward and decide to build their own internal police department and we could piggyback on them? I guess that’s a possibility down the road, but right now the Oakland County Sheriff is really the only game in town.

Next, Oakland County Assessing, we were talking about that earlier, that’s going up from $8,600 to $12,906, that’s the first year, that’s the one year agreement we were talking about earlier, to go to $12,906 for year one. Year two, it goes up another $4,000 or $5,000. I’m not sure, I don’t have the numbers right in front of me, but the thought was let’s go ahead and bake into this budget the increase to get through year one. So, in the budget proposal, we have enough funds to cover the $12,906, which would be year one. So, those funds are included in the budget proposal. A 50% increase, but again, in the interest of time, we just don’t feel like we have any opportunities here.

Third was the city attorney. Initial concerns was that was going to go from $30,000 to almost $40,000. In the city attorney search committee process, one of the questions we’ve asked the prospective attorneys, we’ve asked them point blank, do you think you could do the city attorney role for $30,000 a year? And all of them did respond positively, yes, we think we can do that. Might take some adjustments, maybe they don’t attend every city council meeting, but maybe every other one, or they attend via Zoom, not in person, that saves them drive time. So, we think, in discussions with them, that we think we can stay at the $30,000 budget, so we’ve brought that estimate from $39,000 down to $30,000. So, that ends up being a 0% increase, so that’s great news.

Number four was building and inspection services. We’ve talked previously about that quote. For the fixed cost of building, this is not the variable cost, like when somebody has an electrical permit and they have an electrical inspector come out to their house, that’s not included in these numbers, at least not the current structure. Currently we’re paying $19,600, that’s going to go up to $36,000 under the current agreement with Carlisle-Wortman. Working with Independence Township Building Department, which I’ve had several meetings with them now, I’m very comfortable with the proposal they’ve put together for $30,000. That actually includes, the savings that’s actually even bigger than the $6,000 that’s shown here on this slide because they would include in that $30,000 two things that are huge, really. One is inspections. Whether we have one inspection next year or 100 inspections, they will include that in the $30,000. No additional per inspection fee that we’re currently paying. Secondly, is they’re including in that code enforcement. We have a current need to hire a separate code enforcement officer. They’re going to do that as part of the $30,000 contract. Those are two big wins that aren’t even shown in here. I’m showing a $6,000 savings. It’s going to actually be much more than that. It’ll be $12,000 to $15,000 savings year over year, so that’s great news. I don’t have the contract yet from Independence Township, but we’re getting close, and I’ll bring that to council, of course, for approval. Ryan would review it, but that would be an intergovernmental agreement with Independence Township.

And then last, but this challenge, of course, we’ve talked about many times, is the administrative staff salary increases to reach a competitive level that will allow, and I’ll just keep re-emphasizing this point, will allow us to attract and retain qualified people who feel we need to go to this level. I’m going from $131,000 to $162,000, a $30,000 year over year increase. I know that’s a big number to swallow, but that’s what, this is not, didn’t come on to us last week.

This has been building for years, the need to get competitive on our salaries. It’s been building for years. And we’ll go through, I have a slide later on that shows the individual salaries, employee by employee. We’ll get through that in a future slide here.

So, any questions on this? Just throw out your questions as we go. Don’t save them to the end. For council, that is.

Jones said so, on the building and inspection services, I know we’ve been talking about, you know, this partnership with Independence Township to get out of the Carlisle/Wortman because of their, the things, their changes. Yeah, is there any other option as we sign with Independence to continue looking for other alternatives, just in the thought of future cost savings? Smith said yes, I mean this would not be a hard commitment. We can move at any time on this. Jones said OK. Smith said the thought is in the interest of time, let’s move forward with Independence Township. We just don’t have the time to do a full assessment, but I’m not ruling that out. Let’s do a full RFP [Request for Proposal] from other providers. I don’t know any other than just getting an individual out here, but we did, I did look at the Michigan Municipal League salary study and looked up the cost of the various inspectors. So, you have to have a building official, you have to have an electrical inspector, a plumbing inspector and so on. You add all that up and that was going to be more than the $30,000, it was going to be like $40,000, almost $40,000. So, just looking at that, and I know that’s not an RFP, but it is indicative that their quotes are comparable. They have, Independence Township, just this earlier this year, vetted all their inspection and employee costs, so they’re confident that these are vetted numbers that make up that $30,000 proposal. But, not to say we can’t quote this with other suppliers, just in the interest of time, my thought is for year one at least, let’s go with Independence Township. July 1 is quickly approaching. That was a date that Carlisle/Wortman said they’d like to be ready to move on. Jones said yeah.

Smith said any other questions on this?

So, let’s talk about the funding. Let’s talk about the funding. So, how do we pay for this total, which is $66,000 on the previous slide, how do we pay for that? So, this is all five challenges, not just one or the other, it’s all five challenges. The thought was could we cut back here and there, rob Peter to pay Paul kind of thing, and go through all the budget, buy fewer paperclips, all that kind of stuff to fund this? To some degree you can, but you can’t just make up $60,000 of just the total of those five challenge areas.

(To Smith), Quisenberry said this $72,641, should that be $66,070? Smith said you’re absolutely right. Avery said well, isn’t just those are just the five that come up $66,000. Smith said correct. Avery said there are other items in the budget I think – Quisenberry said that bring it up to that $72,000? Smith said you’re both right. There are many other estimates that have gone up, like fire services. Fire services went up 8%, but that’s not included here. But no, this is strictly a typo. The initial number was $72,000 when I, after, through our scrubbing, we brought it down to $66,000. So that slide that I’ve got up here right now should say to fund the $66,000 increase it is proposed that the library millage [reduction] be removed.

Avery said what is the number of the overall budget increase. Smith said of all accounts. Avery said yeah. (To Coté), Smith said do you off the top of your head. Coté said I don’t. Smith said we have it here in the slide, so all of the 101 account – Coté said it is in the latest slide – (continuing), Smith said is an increase from $853,000 to $927,000. I don’t have a calculator with me, but that’s – Coté said yeah. Avery said yep. Smith said some actually went down so it’s not too much higher than that $66,000. Jones said $74.

So, the proposal here is to remove the millage [reduction]. Just to refresh your memory, in August 2014, ten years ago, over ten years ago, there was an agreement by city council to take the sting out of a new library millage of 1.25, to take that sting away. They said, we will reduce the city’s mills by 0.691. And so that was put in place. It did say in future years this would continue, but there’s nothing that says that has to be, by law, that has to be. That couldn’t be removed. So, that’s what’s being proposed here. Over the last ten years, by having that 0.691 millage reduction in place, we have saved the voters or the residents $339,000. In 2025 alone, that 0.691 equates to almost $44,000. So, that $44 goes a long way to our shortfall. Would we save on paper clips and other things? Yes. But this $44,000 is largely what’s going to make these five challenge areas doable, physically doable. So, the average increase, so this effectively is an increase that homeowners will see in their tax bill. The average increase that we’ve gotten a consensus from Oakland County is the average increase will be just under $100, $99.99. And lastly, to reiterate, this elimination does not in any way, shape, or form impact the library’s budget. They have a millage of their own now. They’re not relying on us. Removing this makes no difference to them. It’s a little bit of an increase for homeowners, but it doesn’t change the library’s services in any way, shape, or form.

[Smith is misstating what happened with the .691 library millage. The purpose of the .691 mill rollback promise was to induce Clarkston voters to vote for a new district library that would collect a separate 1.25 mills, and the city council wanted voters to approve the new district library (now known as the Clarkston Independence District Library). Without this promise, Clarkston taxpayers would be taxed 1.25 mills for the new district library PLUS the .691 mills they were already paying for the old library, which the city would then spend for other things. Smith is correct that the promise made by the city council not to double-tax Clarkston taxpayers made in a resolution isn’t legally binding on future city councils, the promise can be broken after the council got what it wanted from Clarkston voters, and if the budget is approved, Clarkston taxpayers will now be paying that double library tax which will be used to fund large salary increases for city employees. The unfortunate lesson is that Clarkston government can’t be trusted to keep promises and residents should insist that any future promises be made legally binding, such as through a change to the charter.]

(To Ryan), Smith said is there anything else you want to say? Is there anything else we can think of relative to this? Ryan said this is not a vote of the authorized millage. We’re still at the millage rate, at the max millage rate. But it’s not a vote of the – let’s ask Smith. We told him about this. It’s what the maximum of the millage rate would be without going over it. Avery said right, as a council, we’re allowed to – Ryan said yeah – Avery said increase millage up to the – Smith maximum allowable level. Forte said so, then anything after that has to be voted on? Ryan said correct. Forte said OK, thank you.

So, this slide shows the actual millage rates. As you know, the Headlee Act brings down the millage rate every year. So that orange bar is the maximum allowable, which is referring to, goes down year over year. The difference between the orange and the gray bars is what we’ve been getting year after year after removing the library millage. If we do this, what’s being proposed in this proposal is the gray bar and the orange bar would become the same. This would be the maximum allowable. There would be no .691 reduction. So, that’s just graphically showing you what we just talked about.

Quisenberry said I understand it would be the same, but how come the numbers aren’t the same? They’re two-tenths different. Smtih said they’d both be 11.4923. Quisenberry said oh, I’m looking at the top. Oh, I got you. Smith said so, the maximum allowable would still drop for the Headlee Act. It would go down 2.9%, but the total levy would actually go up slightly by 3.9%.

This slide is just for homeowners’ education, that they know that over the years, their assessed value and their taxable values are climbing nicely. So, the Oakland County Assessing Office tracks this information, and what they’re saying is year over year, just this last year, the values have gone up 5.4%. Our taxable values cannot go up as fast as the assessed values. That’s a requirement of Proposal A, to stop people from being taxed out of their homes. So, it caps us. So right now, as you see in the bottom of the chart, little right-hand corner there, assessed values go up to $95 million, but taxable values go up to $63 million. That’s because of Proposal A. In the bottom, it shows you what we anticipate revenue-wise. So, you take the 11.4923, which is the millage, which we just talked about in the previous slide, you multiply that times the taxable value that we get from Oakland County of $63 million, and that tells us how much money we will actually receive from the county for taxes. $729,000. That’s our estimated income. Now, on the next slide, you’ll see where that number comes into play.

So, in the proposed budget, our very first line item on the budget is current proposed or expected tax revenue. Currently, it’s $646[,000]. With two impacts, one being that the higher taxable values and two being the removal of the CIDL [Clarkston Independence District Library] reduction, the combination of those two, what we’re putting in is $722,000. $722,000. You might ask, well, wait a minute, Jonathan. You just told me on the previous slide our tax revenue will be $729,000. Why do you only have $722,000? We built in a bit of conservation, what was the word I’m looking for? Coté said conservatism. Smith said conservatism. Thank you, Coté. And put in $722,000, not $729,000, because the county will reimburse us for anybody that is past due on their property taxes, their real property taxes, but they will not reimburse us for personal property defaults. So just to be a little on the conservative side, we put in $722,231, not the full $729,000. So that’s leaving a little bit of comfort there.

So, that’s the first line on the revenue side of our 101 proposal here. The rest, I won’t go through these line item by line item, but we can see some of the bigger items.

Permit fees going down about the fifth one. You see that growing slightly, so we anticipate that. Which, by the way, if we go with Independence Township to do our building services, they are going to bring us in line with their permit fees, so electrical permits, plumbing permits, all that good stuff. They will bring us in line with theirs, which they also recently vetted. So, they looked at, they did a full survey. We benefited from this work. They did a full survey of surrounding communities and what they charge for electrical permits, plumbing permits, and all that. So, they would bring us up in line with that. Most of our permit fees will go up slightly. A couple of them are actually going to go down. But they will bring us in line with those vetted charges. So that’s, I think, good news. As a result, we think we’re going to get to about $28,000. Is that a number I can stand behind? No, because I don’t know if tariffs or what have you suddenly drive lumber costs through the roof, we won’t get to that $28,000. But if lumber costs kind of stay where they’re at, it’s a very doable number.

(To Smith), Rodgers said I have a question. The Christmas Market is not a revenue-generating event. It has not been in the past. Is that something that you’re proposing for it to be this year? Because, you know, we get donations from the community, and they are donating for the market itself, not to contribute to our budget. Smith said well, that’s the thought, is that these are donations down here that just offset the cost. So, on the next page, there is a cost for the Christmas Market. Rodgers said OK. Smith said and so, this is offsetting that cost. So, we just, like everything else, we have a revenue side and an expense side and various accounts. Rodgers said I just want to be clear to everybody that’s looking at it so that when we go out and ask for – Smith said yeah – (continuing), Rodgers said donations, people realize that they are donating to the market itself, a community event, and not to – Smith said the city – (continuing) Rodgers said add to the city’s budget. Smith said right, they’re not paying our electric bill or paying employees a benefit.

Let’s see, anything else on here I’d like to comment? About halfway down, state revenue sharing or sales tax. The state has given us guidance on this. They think the sales tax revenue will go down slightly. They’re just estimating a little tighter market this year. So, they’re saying our expected share of sales tax revenue will drop about 1.7 percent. Not a huge change there, but some. Everything else is very close to carryable. So that’s the revenue side of our 101 budget.

Moving on to the expense side of our 101 budget. The second line item is administration. So here is the first of a few increases related to the salary increases.

So, under administration, you have my salary as well as Evelyn’s [Bihl’s] salary. And we’ll see in the next item our clerk’s salary, and then we get down to the treasurer. That’s a few line items down. Those three in the proposal is to, and you’ll see a separate slide later on the actual employee-by-employee salaries, so we’ll go through that in a future slide here. But that’s, those are some of the changes on this expense page.

Also shown here is the assessor. We’ve talked about that. That goes from $8,600 to $12,900.

Elections, we’ve actually reduced that expense this year because we don’t have a presidential, we don’t even have a gubernatorial election this year or a senate. It’s a very simple local election this year, so costs will go down there.

Let’s see. What else? Any other comment?

Police. We talked about it earlier. That goes up 13.4%.

Fire goes up 8.3%.

DPW has some increases in there as well for salaries. We’ll talk about DPW salaries as well when we get to the salary slide. I’m going to get back to that.

Rodgers said how did the historic district go down so low? What was the difference there? Smith said so, they had asked a few years ago, they asked for funds for a consultant and training, both. The training, I couldn’t agree more with. Let’s get our commissioners trained as needed. It’s not a huge cost. Most of that’s online training, so it’s not a huge cost for that. So, the training aspect can be easily covered by the $750, but the consulting, because we have Main Street Clarkston, Main Street Oakland County, membership, what we found is that the Main Street organization of Oakland County, specifically Ron Campbell, has been helping us with any consulting needs. So, if the HDC wants to consult with somebody, it’s like this railing that they’re proposing is not something we’ve seen in the past. They can consult with Oakland County rather than paying a consultant. They’re doing that for free. So as a result, we think $750 is a reasonable amount for that. Rodgers said OK.

So that’s the expense side of the 101 general fund budget. Any more questions on that?

All right, so let’s go on to our road funds. 202 and 203, these are self-funded. They get funded through State Act 51. So, we don’t have to add anything to this out of the operational monies. Everything is looking great here, and what we’ve been doing with our auditor’s help, Rana Emmons, we’ve been realizing that there are monies, there’s an ability to use local road funds for road paving. So, if there’s excess funds on these accounts, and they’ve been kind of building over the years, specifically now with Jimi [Turner, DPW supervisor] doing a better job of managing the Act 51 program, we have seen an increase in Act 51 money coming in from the state. As a result, these funds have been growing, and we can start tapping into those. And so that is part of, when we get to the CIP [Capital Improvement Plan], we’re going to look at that, it’s actually the next slide, where we’ll talk about the fact that there are monies in this 203 that we can tap into.

So, the $100,000, it’s shown about two-thirds of the way down the page, that Act 51 money, our proposal is to use that. We put it in last year’s as well. We didn’t spend it. The proposal was to do some roads in 2024. We did not get to that, so the monies haven’t gone anywhere. They’re still there. Rodgers said what is the Act 51 program? Smith said Act 51 is a state-funded program where they will pay the local municipality for maintaining their roads. Rodgers said OK, thank you. Smith said yup. So, the more time that Turner and Carson [Danis, DPW laborer] use our equipment, they call it equipment fund, but, so if we’re using our trucks to plow the roads, we’re using our trailer to patch the potholes, they pay us for that time. So, we’re essentially renting our equipment.

So, let’s go on now to the capital fund. You’ll see that road cost included in this. So, here’s essentially our capital project fund, our 401 budget for the budget proposal. Across the top, you see the source. I have our fund balance. Parking fund, major road fund, you can’t really use major road funds for anything, but you can transfer them from major to local, and we’ve done some of that. So, our local road fund, then I can use monies in there for road paving, local road paving.

So, let’s go down to the left side. Professional contractual services. Not a lot goes on in there, but it gives us some room if needed to contract with somebody for capital improvement funds. That’s $3,500.

Tree planting is carried over year over year. We put in there $5,000 for tree planting.

Street signs and posts, we do have an ongoing $1,000 we put in there because street signs are always getting hit and damaged.

Crosswalk tape, this is another year over year carryover that we have to do every year, is repaint our crosswalks. I don’t do the whole city at once. I kind of divvy it up into thirds. So, about a third every year, I get all the city up to date on their repaint.

Office furniture, you can see Ryan’s chair here is covered with duct tape. So, we do have an occasional need for some new furniture. Quisenberry said that’s not why you’re leaving, is it? Rodgers said no, that’s why you got the chair.

(To Smith), Quisenberry said should professional service contracted, that $3,500, should that follow through all the way over the total? Smith said no, we only pull that out of the operational fund balance. We don’t pull, oh, yes, you’re right. (To Quisenberry), Smith said over the far-right total, yes, good point. We need that to carry over. Thank you. Good catch.

Continuing on the professional contractual services, some others, we have $25,000 set aside for storm drain repairs. So last year, this past year, we had all of our sewer, our sanitary sewer, and storm drains camera’d. And there were some that are in bad shape and need to be lined. So, what this money is for is the lining of those. What I’m told is if we do this lining, it’s robotically, no digging involved, it’s all robotically sprayed, a liner on the inside of these pipes. If we do that now, we can get another 25 to 50 years out of our pipes. It’s incredible value for the money. So that’s the proposal here, is start doing that and trying to extend the life of our pipes, our underground piping. And that’s not done. That’s just what we’re proposing this year. I think we could probably do another $20,000 the following year.

Computer scanning, that’s the scanning of all of our documents in our room to allow for better research or search, document searching. We need to get that done. That was on the docket for this year. We did not get that done. So that’s just a carryover, essentially.

Sidewalk repair, I’m not proposing anything. Last year, we spent a total of $74,000 for sidewalks. I think we’re in pretty good shape on our sidewalks. Not to say if there’s one that just pops up out of nowhere, I can’t fix it. Well, we can do that, but I’m not going to do a big wholesale project on sidewalks this year.

Road resurfacing, I talked about that earlier. We want to resurface East Church, hopefully, with a Category B grant. We’ll be able to do that. And we’d also like to do Miller. So, a combination of the grant monies and what we have in our parking fund and our local road fund, we’re setting aside $170,000 for road work in the coming year.

Security cameras was on the docket for last year, as was speed control for Depot Road. We had set aside some money in last year’s budget. Neither one of those got done. So those are carrying over.

(To Smith), an unidentified man in the audience said can I have a quick question. I forgot. The security systems and camera, were those actual cameras in Depot Park? Smith said it could be either Depot Park, or we talked about the possibility up at Main Street. The unidentified man said OK. Smith said I’d love to have some cameras up there. We’re getting more and more incidents there. I’d love to have some cameras at Depot and Main and Washington and Main. The challenge there is the connectivity back to our Storm server here. So, that’s, I don’t think I can get that done for $5,000. We have to have all kinds of boosters and stuff, but that, we’ll see. I’d like to have at least one camera, if not two, out in the park, and one or two up in town. The unidentified man thanked Smith.

Other questions on the capital project fund?

Quisenberry said does that $253,200 increase $3,500? Smith said yes. Wylie said that would be $258,700. Coté said yep. Smith said yep. Thank you.

Pardee said we have an issue with East Washington. That was going to be our issue to fix, and I don’t recall that being fixed, as well as there were issues in the alley that the business owners were going to pay for. Smith said in East Alley? Pardee said yeah. Smith said yes. I have, I just recently got an estimate for the city’s portion, which is basically on East Washington. The alley, as I’ve said, is owned privately. So those business owners, if they wish to do it, would be responsible for that lining. But the good news is, I’ve talked about this lining technology. That storm drain in the East Alley and then going as it makes the turn and goes down Washington to Main Street, all of that can be lined, so no digging involved. Previously, we had an estimate from HRC, which included digging, and it was about $200,000. With the lining technology, we can do that for, I don’t have the exact number in front of me – Pardee said but it’s the issue in East Washington roadway. Smith said yes. Even the structures themselves, the vertical structures that go up with a manhole cover, even those can be lined and salvaged for another, how many years, I don’t know, but it’s a great opportunity for us to get past that.

OK, let’s go to a slide that we include in our proposal every year. Sources and uses. These are just the big ones. So where is the money coming from, and where is it going to be used? The big-ticket items.

In order from largest to smallest, $100,000 from our local road fund, 203. I mentioned earlier that those are monies that have been building up due to the Act 51 monies received from the state, so we have $100 grand, that’s great news. We’re proposing in this budget to take $83,000 from the fund balance, $75,000, which is an increase, twofold, one from taxable value increases, and secondly the removal of the CIDL [Clarkston Independence District Library] millage reduction [the broken city promise involving the .691 millage reduction]. Combination of those two brings in almost $75,600, and then we’re proposing pulling $70,000 out of the parking fund, which Coté, I don’t know if you know it off the top of your head, the current balance of the parking fund, but it’s way around $100,000, isn’t it? Coté said it’s a little bit north of that. Smith said a little north of $100,000. Coté said yes.

So those are the main sources and then let’s look at uses. So, what will we do with that money?

First one, again highest to lowest, we’d repave East Church and/or West Miller, and again this is somewhat dependent on whether we get the Category B grant that will determine whether we do East Church. West Miller, by the way, if we close West Miller this year, if we decide to close Miller to through traffic, this would be the perfect year to repave Miller. We have the funds to do it, and I would really push. Now if we don’t close Miller, it’d be the worst year to repave Miller Road because there’s so much traffic on it. But if we do, in our next meeting, we vote to close Miller Road until the fall, this would be the perfect year, a nice quiet year, to get that repaving done. Pardee said no engineering costs on that. Smith said there would be some, yes. Pardee said but if you haven’t established a plan to do West Miller. Smith said not all the nuts and bolts details to your point, and you ask about the culvert and all that. I don’t think any culvert replacement is included in that, but we’ll look at all of that in more detail as we get closer.

$35,000 in document scanning. Again, that was to be done this year, but didn’t happen.

$33,180 for salary adjustments based on the salary study.

$25,000 in storm drain linings and pipe lining.

$8,620, we haven’t talked about this one yet. This is to make Danis, our second Turner sidekick, to make Danis a full-time employee. Carson has been working more and more hours, just enough work to keep both Turner and Danis busy. Danis has been just on a part-time basis, but finding we need more and more hours. Secondly, Danis has been with us a few years. He’s got a girlfriend now. He’s looking to get a little bit more steady income. We have talked to Danis, and we’re going to take the step to make him a full-time employee. We need it. He needs it. And $8,600 to make him full-time, I think, is an appropriate number.

And then lastly, under the uses, under the proposal, we would reopen the city offices on Fridays as a service to our residents. Casey said what’s the thinking on that one, besides service? Smith said I’m sorry? Casey said reopening the offices on Friday. Smith said yes. Casey said it’s a service to the community. What was the rationale for closing? There just weren’t enough people to warrant having employees here every day. And as we try to get to a steady 32 hours a week for our staff, we’re not supposed to be here 40 hours a week. We’re paid for 32. So that’s four days, right? So, coming in on Friday, we were violating that. We’re finding ourselves working more than 32 hours. So that was the other thought in cutting back. Now, what we’re doing differently this time as a proposal is we cover five days a week. But not all of us are here every day. So, we’ll still be at 32 hours a week. But maybe this week, I work Friday. Next week, Coté works Friday. If I don’t work, Angie [Guillen, contract clerk] works Friday. We’ll spread it around so that on average, we’re hitting a 32-hour work week. But we’re covering five days a week. So, if somebody comes in, wants to pay their sewer bill, and they’re frustrated that we’re not open, or they just have a question, the thought was this is a way of improving service to our residents.

Wylie recognized Forte for a comment.

Forte said yeah, how often do you guys have people who want to come in on Fridays? Well, Coté was recently open on – Coté said I was here on a Friday, and I had four residents come in in the a.m. period. Smith said yeah. Coté said I was surprised. Forte said yeah, that’s awesome. Smith said I think the demand will grow – Coté said once the word spreads, yeah – (continuing) Smith said if we start, once the word gets out that we’re open on Fridays, I think people will. A lot of people tend to take Fridays off, and they come in to do city business, and we’re not here, and they get frustrated. So, we’re kind of reversing a previous decision that if we can spread it out, it’ll be painless.

Casey said getting back to East Alley with that sewer there, that thing is sinking. There’s a real depression there. Would the project include the lining of it as well as bringing it back to grade? Smith said we haven’t actually talked about bringing it back up to grade. There is some crumbling of the structure itself, and there would be some masonry work needed up near the surface. I don’t know whether we’d bring it right back up to grade. I wasn’t here long enough to know whether that has just been sinking at two inches every year the last 20 years or what’s happened there. They, the company that does the lining has looked at it. They think the bottom is firm, but there are some crumbling bricks up near the top. Those would probably have to be manually replaced before they do the lining. But we’ll have to get into that further, but the good news is, guess you can look at this as good news, that’s not our problem. That’s owned privately – Casey said right – (continuing), Smith said by those business owners. Out on Washington, which is our problem, that structure is in better shape. So, the good news is if there is cost in rebuilding that before we line it, that would be on the property owners to fix that.

Casey said I’ve got one more question on paving. Is East Washington between Main and Buffalo on the radar to be repaved anywhere, is it? Smith said it wouldn’t be in 2025 or 2026. It would be in 2027. That is one of the higher, not the highest, but one of the higher in our RAMP [Road Asset Management Plan] report. Our RAMP report tells us the priority of the road condition and when it should be paved in the overall scheme of paving. It was last updated in 2019. It should be updated every five years. We did not do that in 2024, but I talked with SEMCOG [Southeast Michigan Council of Governments] just last week, and they are going to do that for us this summer. SEMCOG is going to come out and do a full update of the RAMP report. They look at the road condition, and they’ll update that report. Then, who knows, maybe I’ll say, geez, Washington looks great compared to Overlook or some other roadway. We’ll have to re-evaluate once we see that updated RAMP report. I can tell you it’s up there. Washington is not as bad as Church, but it’s probably the same age. Buffalo is getting bad, too. So, yeah, we’re not out of the woods. We’ve done a lot of paving. I’m happy to say we’ve done a lot of paving in the last three, four years. Most of it on the west side of Main Street. We’ve got to get busy on the east side of Main Street. So, that’s my plan this year, next year, and probably 2027 is to focus on the east side of Main Street.

OK, let’s talk about fund balance. Checking account balance, you say, can I afford this? You know, if you were looking at your checking account, this is what our fund balance is. This is what we use. You’d be appropriate in asking, can we afford to do all this, Jonathan? So, this is what we go by. The auditor did a full audit last year. You know, as of July 1, 2024, that $268,527 you see at the top, that is an official number from the auditor. So, she put that in black and white, and we have that. Let’s build off of that. That’s our starting point.

So, add the revenue we’re expecting for this fiscal year. We’re currently at ‘24/’25. Add that little over $1 million. Subtract the expenditures that have happened already and will still happen of $966,000.

That means our net revenue, good news story here, is our revenue exceeds our expenditures by $39,000. So, that’s going to increase our fund balance from the $268 that Raina told us it was up to $308. That equates to 31.9%, a very healthy fund balance. As you know, we cannot fall below 16.6%. We have a very comfortable fund balance as of June 30.

Now, the $308 number carries over to our projected fund balance through the new fiscal year. So, that’s the starting balance for our new fiscal year. It’s a projection, but we hope here in May we’re pretty close to knowing what we’re going to spend and receive in this coming fiscal year. That’s the starting point.

We add to that the 101 revenue that we just went through, those slides, the yellow headed slides. $930,000, our expenditures of $927,000. And our 401 operational column, that’s the operational fund money of $83,200. All those net out to be a decrease of our fund balance, which I think we do need to decrease our fund balance. So that works out to a net reduction of our fund balance, bringing the $308,000 down to all the things being equal to $227,000 as of June 30, 2026. That equates to 24% fund balance, still a very healthy fund balance.

So, this is an exercise we go through as part of the overall assessment. Is this budget proposal doable? And I think it is. The fund balance is saying that we’ll still have a healthy fund balance at the end of the new fiscal year.

Avery said quick question. What that $80,375 does concern me, what’s in that number? Why do we have a deficit of $80,000? Is it because – (interrupting Avery), Smith said well, if I take the $930,000 revenue, subtract the $927,000 expenditures, and also subtract the 401 expenditures – Avery said which is the capital fund – (continuing), Smith said that’s what’s left over. So, we’re actually going to dip into our checking account balance to the tune of $80,000 to do everything that was proposed in the proposal, including the 401 work. Avery said right. It’s a little concerning, only for the fact that, you know, as a city we should be able to handle our capital improvements without going into deficit spending to do it. Right? I mean, in the perfect world, that’s how we should be running it. Smith said yeah. Well, I look at it this way. We’re a little bit behind the eight ball on road paving. Avery said right. Smith said we’ve been trying to catch up on road paving for several years now. I think we’ve made a great headway. Avery said we have. Smith said we still have more to do. So, our fund balance is getting a little too healthy, dipping into it a little bit to continue on with our road paving program I think personally it’s acceptable, and getting that down to 24% is still comfortable.

And as Pardee will remind us, not picking on Pardee, but he’ll remind us, we don’t get to all of our projects every year. This is all things being equal that we will get all these projects done, like the computer scanning and the document scanning. We wanted to get that done this year. We didn’t get it done. So, the $30,000 didn’t go anywhere, but the $30,000 we set aside for document scanning just carries over. So, it’s possible, likely I’d even say, that we won’t get all of our projects done and the fund balance won’t be as low as $227,000.

(To Smith), Casey said why did you figure, what’s the basis for the revenue in fiscal ‘25-‘26 being less than the revenue for this ‘24-‘25? Smith said so, in the current year, revenue was boosted by our police refund from Independence Township. Casey said OK, got it. Smith said almost $100 grand. (To Casey), Smith said very good question. That’s it. You say to me, what? You had over a million dollars of revenue in ‘24-‘25. Why is it going down? (To Casey), Smith said very good question. That’s because we’re not getting a police refund every year.

Jones said so, speaking of police refund, I’m just curious as we’re looking at revenue sources, you know, one point of contention for me has been that the county is putting all these increases on us with no guarantee of seeing anything in return in terms of police presence or traffic stops. And just given that that has been a major community concern, I’m just wondering, like, why that hasn’t been brought up more as an issue of where we can try to get some of the revenue that we should be getting from our police services to help increase revenue in here. And so, I’m just wondering, like, is there anything, like anything, that has been discussions with, I mean, Sergeant Ashley comes in here and he shows us the chart every month. And I mean, I’m not seeing an ROI [Return on Investment]. And I’m not saying that we eliminate them because I know we need them. I’m just saying it would be nice to see a return for the money that we’re paying them since Oakland County is saying that they’ve been subsidizing us for so long, even though we have been actively paying them money on a contractual basis.

Smith said on the assessing side, that is absolutely true. It was shocking to us to learn just in the last month or two that they feel they’ve been subsidizing us all these years. We didn’t know that. We thought they were billing us on expenses incurred. But what they’re saying, they were actually losing money on us. On police services, the challenge there is just the lack of manpower. So, he’s got three officers, sometimes four to cover the whole township. The weigh master would be a fourth or a fifth. But to the extent that we can have more tickets written, that’s actually a line item in our revenue side. As I mentioned earlier, we get two-thirds of every ticket. So, court costs, Ryan knows this. A case goes to court for speeding or parking or whatever that the Oakland County Sheriff writes, we get two-thirds of that. Weigh master, like Robert said, he’s absolutely right. Those are big tickets, $500,000 tickets to a trucking firm. We get two-thirds of that. That’s a potential ROI that we could look into. But it’s going to come down to how many officers are available to patrol us, more so than the township.

(To Smith), Rodgers said you know, what she’s saying, to just piggyback on that, we know, like Robert said, he checked his Ring and there was twenty semis coming down. It seems to me that all of Independence Township isn’t having twenty semis coming down a rural road. Jones said yeah. Rodgers said so, for that time period, that one hour that he has, that’s just an hour. That’s just a snapshot, right? Smith agreed. Rodgers said it doesn’t seem like a big ask to have our officer sit at that corner. Because really, truly, all it’s going to take is that officer sitting there for maybe a week. And then those tractor trailers are not, are not going to come down that road anymore if they’re getting that assessment. But I get when they say they don’t have enough staff. That’s a given. We know that. Jones said yeah. Rodgers said but it just seems to me that when we know that there’s a particular time that they could do that, that it would be worth their while and our while to just park them there at that time. I can’t imagine that all of Independence Township is having that issue at that time.

Wylie said can I interject for a moment. You guys are bringing up really great points that need to be discussed. But I think we need to focus on, that we’re getting off the budget. So, I’d like to do something. Let’s stick with that. Thank you.

Smith said Sergeant Ashley’s not here tonight, but the next meeting let’s bring that up. Rodgers said thank you. Smith said it’s going to be squeaky wheel, right? We just need to keep putting that bug in his ear. All right.

Smith said all right, let’s talk about the salary proposal that we’ve been going through. I’ll try to go through all these numbers quickly. In the green column are the current budget. In the blue are the proposed new budget. And then over the right are the year-over-year changes. So, city manager goes from $44,900 up to $58,200. I know that’s a $13,000 increase. And you say, well, why so much so fast? Well, we’ve been inching up. Every year we’ve been doing 2% to 3%, sometimes 4% over the last eight years since I’ve been here. And we’re actually losing ground relative to other municipalities that were at $80,000. And they’ve gone up incrementally at the same percentage. They’ve gone up more. So, we’re actually, those little increases, you say, well, those are adding up. Yes, they are. I started at $30,000. We’re up to $44,900. That’s, that’s good recognition, but my competitors have started at $80,000 and they’re at $109,000. So, it’s all relative to the competition. So, all of these have been adjusted as a group, looking at maintaining some kind of hierarchy between the city manager, the treasurer, the clerk, the administrative assistant, and so on. So, these are based on the salary proposals and the salary study. $58,225 is the rock bottom of the range that the consultant recommended for the city manager. So that’s where that number came from.

City treasurer went up from $33,000 to $40,000. That’s a 20% increase.

Clerk went from $38,000 to $50,000. That’s a 30% increase. We’ve talked about the need to pay our city clerk a good salary. There’s so many things going on in the clerk world, specifically elections and the nine days and early voting and all that comes along with that. There’s so much potential liability, if you will, on the clerk that we just can’t miss a beat. None of us can miss a beat in any of our jobs. But that’s one that’s particularly concerning. I think we need to have a very skilled clerk in our staff. So that’s why that takes a little bit more of a jump.

Administrative assistant just goes up very marginally from $12,300 to $13,800.

So those are the administrative salaries that were all part of the salary study.

On the lower half is the DPW. So we’re taking Turner from $26.50 an hour to $28.00. That’s competitive with Independence Township. Which, by the way, if you didn’t know, they and other communities are poaching Turner all day, every day. They want him. And so far, I’ve been able to retain Turner. And I try to make this a fun, interesting job for Turner so that this is rewarding for him to stay here. But they’re offering $28.00 to start and then going higher. So that’s a concern. All of us, all four of us have been poached, approached by other municipalities to come work for them. All of us. It’s constantly going on. Other municipalities are poaching us. So, you might say, well, why are these salary increases? Well, we’re trying to make this work and not leave.

Secondly, on the DPW line item, I’ve got Danis, a laborer, going to a full-time employee.

So, all in, at the bottom, it’s an increase year over year of almost $45,000. I know it’s a big pill to not swallow. I don’t see this going up that much the following year. There may be some cost of living increase the following year, but it won’t continue at this kind of pace. There’s no way. I would think, you know, maybe 3% the following year. But this is a big kind of one-time adjustment that I feel strongly, and I talked about this in the last council meeting, I feel strongly that we need to address.

Questions on the salary before I finish up?

Wylie said on DPW labor, do we also have to cover his health costs? Smith said not yet. Quisenberry said not yet. Smith  said he’s not 26 yet, so he’s still on his parents’ insurance. Wylie said OK. Smith said so, we have two more years of that before that becomes an issue. Wylie said OK.

Smith said OK. Let’s talk about the capital improvement plan. The first column under proposed budget, that’s what we’re proposing for all of our various CIP projects.

I talked a little bit earlier. We had a 401 budget slide. This is kind of representative of that, tree planting, signposts and whatnot.

$170,000 for road resurfacing and so on and so forth. There shouldn’t be any surprises here. This is all kind of representing or mirroring the images that we saw in that earlier 401 capital improvement fund slide. I’d just like to include this because it does show that we’re looking down the road. No pun intended, but we’re looking at what needs to be done next, road-wise and otherwise. So, this is our five-year plan going outward.

Pardee said so, the asphalt piece of equipment is still holding together? Smith said with Band-Aids, yes. It’s not doing well. We need to get that replaced, but I don’t have any real possibilities to replace that hot patcher. We are looking at auctions. We’re looking at other possible sources for a used hot patcher, but that does need to be addressed. When that day comes along, it’s probably going to be a hit to the fund balance. I’m not including it in the budget here because I don’t even know what the number will be. I don’t even have a rough idea. I’ve had estimates from just repairing this one somehow, welding it together, to full replacements. But the full replacement, if I did one, it would probably be a partnership with Clarkson Schools. And we haven’t set a number on how much they pay versus how much we pay. So, it’s really hard to estimate that.

Wylie said can we take a short break so people can hit the restroom? Smith said we’re done with this. I think we can go into questions after the break. Wylie said OK, so we’re taking a short break at 9:27, and we’ll hopefully reconvene in a few minutes.

Wylie said the meeting is reconvening at 9:36. (To Smith), Wylie said you’re back on.

Smith said so, I don’t have anything else presentation-wise. As you know, we’re not voting on this tonight. This is a public hearing. It is the opportunity for council or the residents to comment or ask questions. So, I think that’s where we’re at.

Wylie said all right, so first we’ll open up to council and then to the public. Anybody on council have anything to say or comment on? Any questions?

Jones said I’ll just kind of reiterate what I had started saying earlier with Rodgers. It’s just with looking at the budget and looking for ‘25-‘26 and the ‘26-‘27, I just think that there should be a little more pushback with Oakland County in terms of the services they’re providing. If they’re asking us for X amount of tens of thousands of dollars, and we know they’re short-staffed, we’re going to pay you some more money. What are we going to see in return for that? You know, what’s going to come back? Because that is an increase in the budget, and I feel like if we’re going to ask, you know, this, taking this mill, we need to figure out what else is going to be coming in revenue-wise, and I think that’s a really good opportunity that has been untouched for quite some time. And that’s my big point of concern regarding the budget.

Wylie recognized Casey for a comment.

(To Smith), Casey said I’d just like to express my appreciation for all the work you’re doing. Smith said well, this is a joint effort with the Finance Committee. Casey said yeah, as far as the – I know there’s some consternation about the raises for staff, but I agree with you that looking at the data, we were underpaid. We were certainly having difficulties retaining our folks, and I think everything we’re about to vote on is justified. I appreciate all your work. Thank you.

Wylie said anybody else on council. Wylie recognized Quisenberry for a comment.

Quisenberry said I just want to be cautious about what councilwoman Jones said. I’m very happy, and I think we get a great bang for the buck for our Sheriff’s Office, the service that we get. I see traffic enforcement up and down Holcomb Road. I’ve never heard anybody say, I call 9-1-1 and it takes them 20 minutes to get there. We get response. We get, I think, very good coverage. And if we’re going to send a message like that to the Sheriff’s Department, I’d like the Sheriff’s Department to know that that’s not a unified opinion of the council.

Wylie recognized Avery for a comment.

Avery said oh, and I was just going to follow up with Casey. Salaries, I’m not a huge fan that we’re going to bump them up so quickly. My preference would have been the stepladder, and I relayed that to Smith and talked about it. But I do agree that we need to get the salaries up to a more competitive level. So, you know, as painful as it is to see that number this year, I have faith, and to piggyback on what Casey said, Smith’s done a hell of a job here. So, I put my faith in him that he’s going to do a good job going forward, and I feel like we have to give him the tools to be able to do that, get the right people to keep ‘em. And as much as I don’t want to pay more taxes like everybody else, it has to be done.

Wylie said anybody else.

No comments.

Item D – Public Comments on the Budget Proposal (video time mark 2:27:59):

Wylie said OK, open up to the public. And I said before I’m going to run the three minutes. Not many of you left, but I’ll be running the three-minute timer.

Pardee said am I the only person with a comment. Wylie said yeah, you’re the only, well, I have one e-mail that I’ll read also. Do you want to go ahead and read yours? I’m not going to. I don’t. Wylie said it’s up to you.

Pardee said I don’t need the podium. OK. So, my big issue has been the salary study, and the salary study doesn’t show that Smith is underpaid based on Clarkston City resident count. The salary study used cities to 5,000 people to $5 million budgets, both five times what our community is. So that’s my point, that I don’t think the salary study necessarily, with the data they used, came to a conclusion other than larger cities pay higher salaries. My next concern, my next point is that the .691 millage reneging could, in fact, be covered within the fund balance the way that the budget’s put together right now. I mean, budget 24% will probably come 20%. So, I’m saying if we want to upset residents, then reneging on the .691 millage is the way to go. But it isn’t a requirement of this budget.

Casey said it’s a poor choice of terms. Pardee said I’m sorry. Casey said it’s a poor choice of terms, reneging. It was a gift to begin with. Pardee said well, we’ll argue for a long time about that.

[Note: Casey is lying to the public. The .691 library millage rollback was a lifetime promise to Clarkston taxpayers, which the city council made to induce us to vote for an additional millage that would go directly to a newly created district library. The .691 rollback was promised to avoid double taxation of residents for library services. When taxpayers keep more of their own money, it’s not a “gift” to them from the city.]

Pardee said so, I know I upset the clerk when one of my suggestions to Smith was, let’s treat her like you’d treat an all-star on a sports team. And when you pay that salary, the all-star, you don’t necessarily raise the salaries of everybody else. That was my analogy. So that’s really it.

Smith said OK, can I respond to each of those? Pardee said sure.

Smith said so, there were three comments. First of all, the 5,000 is the maximum that they went with. They looked at zero to 5,000 populations. And then they applied the 25th percentile. So, if you look at the 25th percentile, it’s not five times the average, for example, on the city manager salary component. Their average that included was used in my calculation, the city manager calculation, was at a population of 1,500. So, it wasn’t 5,000. It was something less than that in every case. 5,000 was the max, and often it was much, much lower.

[Note: the salary survey looked only at cities that existed in the Michigan Municipal League’s (MML) database and voluntarily participated in its salary survey. There are many salary surveys; MML’s survey is only one of them. There are approximately 200 cities, villages, and townships in Michigan and the database included only a few of them. Using the 25^th percentile of data from cities that are much larger than Clarkston simply means the consultant was using the lower end of too-high salary ranges.]

Smith said secondly, using the fund balance as a way of funding salaries, my concern is that, yes, you could do that for year one. We have room in the fund balance calculation I showed there. But I don’t believe that’s a sustainable solution. I think we need to look at a long-term sustainable solution. That’s why I’m proposing the removal of the library millage reduction, because that is a more sustainable solution going forward. We could, year one, maybe even year two, use the fund balance. But beyond that, our fund balance just couldn’t carry all five increases that I’ve talked about. Remember, police is going to go up even more the following year, assessing. We don’t know about it yet, but I’m looking for a sustainable solution. That’s why we proposed the millage. I’m a taxpayer here too, believe me. I don’t want to see my taxes go up. But I think this is really the only possible solution.

[Raising our taxes to the maximum allowable simply to fund large salary increases is also not sustainable long-term and the city will likely be asking us to approve additional increased taxes to support Smith’s spending mindset either through bond proposals or a Headlee override. Under Smith’s management, the city spends every dime it gets, saving nothing for a rainy day, and then passing every cost increase off to the taxpayers, for example, the repeated sewer bill increases we’ve been experiencing.]

Smith said your third point was about rockstar general salaries. Paying the one employee higher than the others, maybe it’s done on sports teams, but in the municipal world, even in the business world, rarely do you have the CEO making less than a worker out on the floor. They are always hierarchical, and for a reason. I carry, if something goes wrong on the clerk, it falls on my shoulders. Yes, the clerk will have some explaining to do, but ultimately it’s on my shoulders. I have that responsibility. That’s the reason for the salary hierarchy, is because as you go up the chain, you carry more and more weight on your shoulders. So, I disagree with a thought, let’s raise the clerk to this level, but let’s leave the manager at this level. I’m opposed to that. If that’s the direction the decision would go, I would respectfully resign. Those are my three responses to your comments.

Pardee said did you say you would resign? Smith said if that was the proposal, is leave Jonathan where he’s at, and raise the rockstar salary, that would be disrespectful in my mind, because I’d have the responsibility and no corresponding payout. I would just find that so disrespectful, I’d have to leave.

Wylie recognized Forte for a comment.

Forte said I would argue that they’re all all-stars, like you’re saying. I mean, like, like, yes, obviously the bar has been raised by the new clerk. Like, that goes without saying, like, but I would say, like, like, I just keep thinking about, like, the Red Wings in the 90s. Like, they just were all great, like, and they all leaned on each other for different skills. Like, I mean, like, I agree with Pardee, we are raising the bar, like, for sure. But, like, I think you guys are all getting better together, because there’s a new great player on the team. That doesn’t mean that what you’re doing isn’t substantial. Like, the fact that you’ve been here through all these years, through all the bullshit you had to deal with, pardon my French, like, like, it’s just like, we’ve got to respect that you’ve been here for some time, and kept playing with us. You know what I mean? Like, just like we have to respect our lawyers who stayed here and got paid $90 an hour. Like, it’s crazy. But, like, it’s like we have to appreciate the people we have. And so that’s where I would disagree. I’m so sorry, my baby was up all last night. But I disagree with Pardee, sorry. Wylie said respectfully disagree. Forte said respectfully, obviously. But yeah, I think you guys are all great for different reasons, and we need all of you. Including the people who work on the streets, cleaning up our roads and everything. Like, so, no disrespect to anyone, obviously.

Wylie thanked Forte.

Wylie recognized Jones for a comment.

Jones said yeah, I think, like, let’s put it this way. Do we want to pay our city employee positions more, or is it about the people that are in the positions where some of this pushback is getting? I’m just going to say the quiet part out loud. Because, honestly, like, regardless of who is in these positions, they’re going to have to be paid. Whether it’s Smith, or Guillen, or Bihl, or Jane, or Joe, or Jack, or John. These positions are going to have to be paid, and they have to be paid competitively. Like, full stop. And that’s why we’ve done the study, you know, we’ve gone through it. And whenever I have been an employee, when there has been a survey done of salaries, they roll them all out at the same time. Everyone gets them across the board, no matter if it was someone on the floor, or if it was a mid-manager, or if it was the store manager, or if it was in corporate. Like, the positions that were reviewed and the salaries that were reviewed, those were all implemented at the same time, because that’s just the way you do it. It makes budget planning easier. It’s the logical thing. So, my question is, do we want to pay our city employees more, or do we not? Like, do we want to keep having this same conversation? So, I, for me, again, salary, it has to happen. So, like, it’s going to happen regardless of who’s in the position. Forte said and if Smith were to, say, resign and we went the other direction, the devil’s advocate, to find someone with his capabilities, it would be more expensive. Jones said well, I’m just saying, because we have established that the city manager is going to have a new salary level, and so if it’s not Smith, it’s going to be the next person that comes in, and they’re going to be at this new salary level. So, I just, you know, let’s, you know, be transparent with ourselves.

[Jones is comparing the corporate world to the government. Private companies can raise prices to pay for higher salaries; the government has to raise taxes and is never as generous as a private company when it comes to raising salaries. And all council members are missing the main point – the city knows that if the voters were given the choice to vote for increased taxes to pay for huge salary increases, it is unlikely the vote would be yes. Breaking the library millage promise is a loathsome way of raising taxes for increased salaries without our consent and the only way they could get around asking for consent.]

Smith said the other part of the salary study is when you said as high as 5,000 in population, those would be our competitors. Those would be the people we could potentially poach from another municipality to come here. So, if they’re working in, whatever, in Kalkaska, which isn’t going to happen, that guy’s paid $109,000 a year in Kalkaska. But if we were to poach from another city to attract and retain, I’ve talked about this several times, not only retain people, but attract when we leave, and that day’s going to happen, you’re going to have to have a salary level that’s attractive to actually bring somebody in and poach for the job. So, it’s whether it’s me or whether it’s Joe or Bob or Sarah, whatever, you need attractive salaries that are going to attract and retain.

Wylie said good and thanked Smith.

Wylie said anybody else. Public? Council?

Wylie recognized Cara Catallo for a comment.

Catallo said I’ll send the council my questions just because I think it’ll be easier, but one question I had was that, like, the planning number went down, but I didn’t hear anything about, like, reflected that we need new planners, which I was under that impression, but also, like, I didn’t see any, like, committee budget for, like, the planning committee or the ZBA [Zoning Board of Appeals], but I was also, I still want to encourage, and I’m just going to be, like, a broken record that, however delightful Chuck Phyle may be, I think that the proper way to choose the building department situation is to do more research, and if Smith’s too busy, I was going to suggest that maybe we look into sort of creating a committee with some of our established residents who remember what it was like when we didn’t have, like, higher odds of planning or the building department. So, just, I will say it all in an email since everybody’s tired, but that’s just one thing that I noticed was an issue, and again, I’m, like, a broken record. I wish that the salary at least, I’m on board with the clerk. I look at the clerk as an equal with the city manager, though, so that’s where I differ. I don’t look at the clerk as a worker out on the floor. So, in my opinion, I feel like those are two, like, they should be equally trained sort of positions, and just to remind everybody that these are still sort of considered part-time positions, so we’re working (unintelliglbe). That’s it.

Wylie thanked Catallo.

Wylie asked if Coté if he had a comment. Coté said no. Wylie said oh, I thought you, OK, you changed your mind. Anybody else before I read these? I have one letter to read. Mm-hmm. OK, I did receive phone calls and text messages and a few letters. These, I was asked to read this letter at the meeting tonight. I think everybody on council saw it.

(Wylie read the letter):

Dear Administration and Clarkston City Council, I am writing to express my strong opposition to the proposed 21% year-over-year salary increase and removal of the library millage reduction included in the city’s 2025-26 budget. While I appreciate the dedication of our city employees, such a significant increase raises serious concerns about fiscal responsibility and long-term sustainability of our community’s infrastructure.

The Village of Clarkston faces growing challenges from aging infrastructure, including roads, water systems, and public facilities, which require substantial investment to maintain safety and functionality. Allocating a 21% salary increase without adequately addressing these pressing needs risks straining the budget and deferring critical maintenance, potentially leading to higher costs in the future. I urge the council to reconsider this proposal and prioritize a balanced budget that addresses both fair compensation for employees and the long-term needs of our infrastructure.

A more modest salary adjustment coupled with a clear plan to fund infrastructure improvements would better serve the interests of our community.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely, Robert and Peggy Roth, Washington Management, LLC

[Why didn’t Wylie read the other letters she received? Were they unfavorable?]

Wylie said anybody else have anything else.

Wylie recognized Pardee for a comment.

(To Pardee), Wylie said yes, you have like 25 seconds left on your timer. Casey said now it’s 20. Pardee said I’ll pass. Wylie said because really, I was running the timer. OK, you’re going to pass?

Wylie said OK, anybody else.

No comments.

Wylie said then I’m going to close.

Wylie recognized Pardee for a comment.

Pardee said so, the issue was when I came to town, there was a hullabaloo that I heard from some residents as it related to Independence Township. And I was told, well, look at those CVC decals on doors, and those are the old guard. And so, it’s like a flip-flop to some degree in my mind, and maybe I was warped by something that happened to me related to the township five years ago or ten years ago. (Time rang.) But I don’t think – Wylie said you can wrap it up – (continuing), Pardee said but I would give the citizens of the city the opportunity to vote for tax increase and remain independent of Independence Township.

Wylie thanked Pardee.

Wylie said anybody else before we close. (To Ryan), you’re giving me a look.

Item E – Close the Public Hearing (video time mark 2:47:35):

Avery said I’ll make a motion. Oh, I’m sorry.

Wylie said then I am closing the public hearing at – Avery said 9:55 – Wylie said 9:55 p.m.

Agenda Item #12, Adjourn Meeting (video time mark 2:47:43):

Wylie said and I need a motion to adjourn the meeting.

Motion by Avery; second Jones.

Motion to adjourn the meeting passed by unanimous voice vote.

Wylie said the meeting is adjourned at 9:55.

(To Jones), Avery said I think you hit a home run today.

Resources:

• • Link to video recording here
  • 05-27-2025 city council packet