Month: May 2022

Introduction:

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 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. Mayor Eric Haven has also cut people 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 by the mayor, 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.

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

Agenda item #1, Call to Order:

There was no call to order on the video recording.

Agenda item #2, Pledge of Allegiance (Video time mark 0:00:10):

Pledge said.

Agenda item #3, Roll Call (Video time mark 0:00:25):

Eric Haven, Al Avery, Gary Casey, Bruce Fuller, and Joe Luginski were present.

Laura Rodgers and Sue Wylie were absent.

Agenda item #4, Motion: Approval of Agenda (Video time mark 0:0041):

Motion to approve the agenda as presented by Luginski; second Casey.

Haven asked if there was any discussion.

No discussion.

Motion to approve the agenda passed unanimously by voice vote.

Agenda Item #5, Public Comments (Video time mark 0:00:59):

Haven read the rules for public comments.

Chet Pardee:

Pardee provided his address.

Thank you, Jonathan Smith, for improving the readability of the month-end finance report in the 04-25-2022 council packet. The font got bolded compared to the prior report, but the font size is still smaller than the 08-25-2021 packet. Tonight’s packet represents “retro” backsliding: no bold, small font size, and no color. I have been hoping that making the financial report easier to read would increase council’s interest and understanding.

Tonight’s comments relate to transparency, following the rules, and maintaining the city’s infrastructure. The 2020-2021 budget specifically noted repairing East Church, North Holcomb, Clarkston Road, and $12,000 in sidewalk repairs. North Holcomb has been done, and the Road Commission of Oakland County will cap Clarkston Road this summer. No sidewalk repairs have occurred for several years. Budget year ending 06-30-2021 shows having spent $64,000 of the $244,000 budgeted for capital project expense with $27,000 spent on signs. Jonathan [Smith, city manager] will likely face a similar challenge spending the proposed capital project budget in the 2022-2023 budget before winter. Council should ask why.

I have spoken several times about this year’s budget including cosmetic fencing for back of city hall and office furniture. The current budget approved 06-28-2021 notes “Appropriations – Following are the significant appropriations for the 2021-2022 FY: $8,000 for road paving, $8,000 for sidewalk repairs and replacements, $7,800 for an enclosed outdoor secure storage area behind city hall, $6,800 for Depot Park security cameras, and $6,000 for Depot Park pathways.”

Well, a concrete pad is now planned. It’s not been a good time for fence approvals.

The west end of Miller Road may not be forgotten but after the resolution approved in May and the MDOT denial in August, West Miller is MIA in any of the three capital budget improvement plans: The current budget, Sue Wylie’s presentation on 04-25, and the proposed budget don’t contain Miller Road.

The office furniture for city hall is a bit of a mystery. I recall Greg Coté [treasurer] cautioning me on where to sit after the mayor suggested I go to city hall for information last year. For the recent finance committee meetings, it seemed like the chairs were stable. I can see $897 of office furniture expense in the finance report of 01-31-2022, but I don’t recall a resolution approving the expense or seeing an invoice or check disbursement. I could be wrong, but it does remain a mystery to me. If I am incorrect, I apologize for making an issue of nothing.

Cory Johnston [emailed comment, not acknowledged at the meeting by Haven]:

To: The Council for the City of the Village of Clarkston

Regarding: 2022-2023 Budget Recommendation and required Sidewalk work

Public Comment for the scheduled public hearing on the budget

The budget as proposed has $18,000 for “7 Main Street paver driveways/sidewalks” while the Significant Sources & Uses page says $86,000 for the same 7 driveways/sidewalks. That is a large and unexplained difference that also ignores all other sidewalks in the city.

No work has been done on sidewalks for over 3 years (see January 8, 2018, council meeting information and minutes), that work did not address all work required, and the work that was done did not meet the requirements of federal, state, and local ordinance for accessibility (ADA) [Americans with Disabilities Act]. The work also went far over budget because required contractual procedures were not followed. ‘Bait and switch’ | Clarkston News and June 10, 2019, meeting information and Resolution _06102019-663 (villageofclarkston.org).

This year, there seems to be both a misrepresentation and misunderstanding of the sidewalk/driveway work and a complete refusal to address other areas. With regards to the paver driveways in the downtown area, this has been an issue for many, many years. I have photo documentation going back more than ten years if anyone cares. The previous owners of the apartment building on North Main Street replaced their damaged pavers several years ago. Contrary to the city manager’s comments, it is neither complicated or difficult. The driveways at the Main and Washington parking lot and at Mill Street (Rudy’s and The Fed) are both city owned so no “easement” is required since it is the city’s property to do with as you wish. As for the others, an easement, if required at all, would only be for temporary construction purposes as the driveway and paving on private property is still the owner’s to do with as they wish and they lose no rights to it, nor does the city gain any other than for construction if the city does the work. All that is required is changing the grade to meet the proper sidewalk requirements.

 Overall sidewalk requirements are the critical issue that the city manager appears to be trying to avoid. In addition to the paver condition, the cross slope exceeds 2% (approximately ¼”/ft) as required by Federal ADA requirements, state requirements, and the city’s sidewalk ordinance. It should have never been designed and built this way, but it was. There is also excessive cross slope on other sidewalks, most noticeably on Church Street at the Clinton River going to the Methodist Church. This was noted the last time sidewalk work was approved but nothing has been done to correct the problem. Depot has excessive running slope even though used by many to get to the parking lot and Depot Park, but no one talks about this.

The bottom line is that many of the city’s sidewalks do not meet accessibility and city ordinance requirements. Attempting to define required work as “maintenance” to avoid compliance goes against the intent of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), ignores the elderly and those physically limited who may need a walker, crutches, a wheelchair or have other limitations. From the standpoint of those elected to represent the public, it shows disrespect for the public you serve.

As proposed and budgeted, this is also a risky proposition as removal and replacement of the pavers, even if with the same pavers, could be considered replacement versus maintenance and would require the full compliance that should have always been there. While the city manager has yet to provide detailed information on this and provided no report from the city engineer who has apparently reviewed it, he has stated that the issue exists which means you will undoubtedly be found willfully negligent if you allow this to go on. I will personally file a complaint with the United States Department of Justice as I have been trying to get the Village of Clarkston to address these issues for many years, only to be ignored. You say there is no money but that is a lie. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were found for the city hall renovations even though few of them directly benefit the public. Thousands of dollars were just approved for a concrete pad behind the city hall, even though not needed for the last 40 years or more and something that will have no direct improvement of public health, safety, and welfare. The list of non-essential discretionary spending continues to grow while legally required issues continue to be ignored.

Please reject the city manager’s recommendation and do what serves the public health and safety, as well as being the correct legal and moral thing to do.

A final comment that I make every year at this time. I see no funds for meeting the city’s codification requirements as contained in Charter Section 6.9. In the city’s 30 years of existence, ordinances have only been codified once, resolutions have never been done, and I know of no annual update or printing. Knowing that a resolution exists and verifying that it is correct is currently impossible. I have also noticed that the online ordinances do not always reflect past actions of the council, such as for Property Maintenance. The council can only act through resolution and ordinance. The charter requires that this be codified and made available to the public. You have not done that.

Cory Johnston, PE
[address omitted]

References:

The ADA and City Governments: Common Problems
 – link to U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division Disability Rights Section

What is the maximum slope for ADA sidewalk? – Rhumbarlv.com
Does ADA even apply to sidewalks?

These standards apply to all new construction; however, the ADA also requires that public entities retrofit any public facilities to these standards to ensure equal access. These requirements include sidewalks and curb ramps, which must be retrofitted to meet all current standards.

Haven asked if anyone else had any public comments.

No other public comments.

Public comments were closed.

Agenda Item #6, FYI (Video time mark 00:04:22):

Haven said that he had two items of information.

FYI #1 – Perennial Plant Exchange (Video time mark 0:04:26; page 3/40 of the council packet):

Haven said that this is a one-time event. This is the perennial plant exchange that will be held on June 4^th. That’s a Saturday, and it says 8:30 sharp. Haven said he didn’t see a duration and it’s probably first-come, first-served for the plants, right? City Manager Jonathan Smith agreed. Haven said anyone who wants them can be there to exchange perennials.

FYI #2 – Clarkston Area Farmers Market (Video time mark 0:04:45; page 5/40 of the council packet):

Haven said that this is a seasonal notice. Starting June 18^th will be our farmer’s market through October 8^th. It’s always enjoyable to go there and get your vegetables and so on. 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at Renaissance High School on Waldon. Haven asked if it was on Saturdays. He thought that was intended, but he didn’t see it on the – Jennifer Speagle (clerk) said they didn’t put it on here, but it is Saturday. Haven said not every day, but from June 18^th to October 8^th on Saturdays from 9:00 – 1:00.

Haven asked if anyone else had anything. Speagle said that she had one that she added this afternoon. Haven said that he didn’t see it.

FYI #3 – Oakland County Animal Control Vaccination (Video time mark 0:05:28; page 4/40 of the council packet):

Oakland County Animal Control sent us a flyer a few months ago. “Don’t Wait, Vaccinate,” free rabies vaccines with a purchase of a one- or three-year license that was only on Tuesdays in April. They have extended it through June, and it’s every Tuesday through June, 9:00 a.m. through 11:00 a.m. As of the beginning of June, if you don’t have your dog license, then you incur a penalty, late fee. For those that show up at Animal Control on those Tuesday through June from 9:00 a.m. through 11:00 a.m., they will waive that penalty fee. Now, that’s only if you go to Animal Control during that time. That is not if you come here to get your dog license. If you come here to get your dog license, after she thinks it’s June 1^st, then there’s a late fee. Haven said OK.

Haven asked if there were any other public comments.

No additional public comments.

Agenda Item #7, Sheriff Report for April 2022 (Video time mark 0:06:29; page 6/40 of the council packet):

Haven said they would move on to the Sheriff’s report, and Sergeant Charles Young is here in place tonight of Richard Cummins. If you have any questions about the Sheriff’s report, it’s in front of you, it’s in our packet through April now, obviously.

Avery asked if the stats were in the City of the Village of Clarkston, or are they just out of your substation? Sergeant Young said that these are responsive calls within the City of the Village of Clarkston. Avery said, and you go through them by what we’ve done each month, and this is the month of April. We’re already to 550, and we only have 880 residents, so basically, somebody is calling every day. Avery has never called the police, so that kind of blows his mind. Sergeant Young said that can also be at nighttime that the officer takes a building check, or an area check in the downtown area. They will take a call for service number for that just to show that they were in that area. Avery said so they’re not actual phone calls. Sergeant Young said that they are calls for service of some type, either self-issued by deputies or calls for service from your residents. Avery said that’s good.

Avery said now he was looking at misdemeanors and violent crimes. Any idea? Start with the violent crimes. Sergeant Young said there was one domestic assault. There was one felony warrant arrest for a larceny that had taken place. The warrant had already been issued; they just made the arrest on the (unintelligible). Avery asked if the misdemeanors were just traffic related. Sergeant Young said that they were traffic related, court-ordered arrests where they hadn’t taken care of their court obligations and they were either stopped or came in contact with the police in some way. Avery said gotcha.

Haven asked if there were any other questions for Sergeant Young. Pardee asked if he could ask a question, and Haven said OK. Pardee said in the finance committee meeting last week, they were talking about the security cameras in the park and there’s one here at city hall. There were at least two incidents that Pardee knows about in terms of damages to the restrooms that’s accessible to the outside. Sergeant Young said yes. Pardee said that if he recalls the discussion, the school cooperated and identified who the folks who were – interrupting Pardee, Sergeant Young said in one of the incidents he believed so, and the other one where he believed there was damage to a sink in the bathroom, none of the students were identifiable as students in this area. Pardee said that he was believing that part of the deterrent was communication about something that had occurred that was against the law and to discourage kids from being on camera. Pardee is surprised that there weren’t any charges filed in the first instance when we knew. How was that handled? Sergeant Young said that was handled by the prosecutor. You’ve got two, the juveniles were petitioned. They had no previous record, they don’t call it officially charging them, they basically, the parents are advised of it, and if say the village wanted to go after any type of restitution, they could go after the parents in that fashion, but that is not up to the Sheriff. All the Sheriff can do is file the reports in the form of a petition to the Oakland County Prosecutor, and if they decide to bring the family in for a formal charge, they will do that. Most of the time if it’s a first offense, they will just make a record of it, and it will still stay on file if these juveniles ever have another contact with the police.

Pardee said the city is considering extending their cameras out into the park, and perhaps the Sheriff’s Department has some recommendation in how that occurs and where that occurs. Pardee is just saying that we are going to spend some more money. Sergeant Young said that he knows that we have the concerts, and he thinks that it would be a good idea to, wherever people congregate during the concerts, obviously that would be a good location. Sergeant Young has spoken with Smith a few times, but what you have right now in place seems to be working pretty good. Haven said that they would probably need to have that discussion when it comes up again for actually spending the money later on. Smith agreed.

Haven thanked Sergeant Young. Sergeant Young thanked Haven.

Agenda Item #8, City Manager Report (Video time mark 0:11:06; page 7/40 of the council packet):

Haven said that the next item on their agenda is the city manager’s report. Again, this is in their packet. Haven asked if anyone had any questions or comments for Smith on his report.

Avery said he had more of a procedural complaint. We have free parking for the week of May 23^rd. He gets why, because we are losing spots while they’re doing the [construction], but technically, shouldn’t that come before the council to get a formal approval? Because we’re talking about money that’s coming to the city that we’re basically waiving our ability to get that. It wouldn’t be any different than Smith coming before the council because someone wants to use the park and we waive whatever the fee is for people to use that. That usually comes before us. Avery said that he thinks that in the future, if Smith wants to turn off the parking for a week, bring it before them so they can formally (gestured). Smith said all right, fair point.

Haven asked if there were any other comments or questions.

Smith said that this will be a busy week with the second graders. Haven said he was going to say there are 42. Smith said there are 42 sessions starting tomorrow. Haven said that he’s done it in the past. Smith said he thought they had 12. This year, every school is participating in different classes within the schools. Haven asked if this is outside the village. (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Smith said it was Clarkston schools. Haven said oh my, wow. Smith said that there are 7 schools, times 6 groups in each school. Haven asked if Smith was going to schedule this all in the schedule. Smith said starting tomorrow, there are 6 tomorrow, 6 the next day. Haven said he participated in that in the past and it’s a lot of fun with the kids, you know, they do a mock city council meeting and make a decision, a big heavy decision. Smith agreed.

Haven said that the trash thing was interesting, but that’s been going on for a while. Smith said that the township is leading the charge on this but we’re piggybacking on their initiative and just see where this goes. There are a couple, he thinks there is just one other resident in the city, the bulk of them are township residents, but they did seek out a combination of people for and against a single trash hauler. So, they’ve got a good cross section and in the first meeting, the first thing that they did was split up into for and against and go do some brainstorming. So, there was a good split of the people. There are about 22 people on this committee, so good representation, and we’ll just see where this goes. The recommendations coming out of this would go back to the township board, and Smith would bring it here to the council as well to see if you want to do this or not. This team is just doing the research. They are going to meet monthly or more often just to see if it makes sense. Haven asked if there was an end game to this (unintelligible due to background noise) by a certain date? Smith said no end date has been established. It’s just let’s investigate this.

Casey asked if the goal was to have the township and the city in agreement, or can one make one decision, and another make another decision. Smith said absolutely, they can be separate decisions altogether. There is no requirement that they both do the same thing. Smith said that we could even select a different contractor, different days. In all likelihood, the township is too big for one contactor to do it all in one day anyway. They even talked about the option, you know, one service has Monday in the north quadrant, and the next day is a different contractor, and they have the southeast quadrant. They could break it up so you’re not putting any one single contractor out of business. You know, that’s been a complaint, that you might put somebody out of business by not giving them any of the business. So, they’re looking at that. A lot of different alternatives being considered.

Avery wanted to know why they would put people on the committee that are against it, because if the purpose of the committee is to obtain information, he would think that the folks who are not in favor of it anyways are not going to really do much to add information. Does that make sense? Smith said just in the first night, they raised some very valid points of why you shouldn’t do it that way. Smith said he thinks it’s just devil’s advocate, you know, just bringing up ideas that the people in favor of it would not be able to see or consider. We’ll see where it goes. Smith said he would keep them posted. Smith said he gathered that it’s probably going to be six or seven months before they are ready to bring this back.

Fuller said he was curious. He knows that two companies come down his road. How many companies are now serving the City of the Village of Clarkston? Smith said between four and five. With Advanced and Smith and all becoming Waste Management, so you have Waste Management, GFL, Community, TNR, and he thought there was a fifth one. But those are the four main ones. Fuller said so on five different mornings, the nights before, there’s trash out on the streets in our city. Smith said yes. So, it’s a visual thing, but also the truck traffic on the road. You have five trucks, and if they have separate trucks for recycling, let’s hope they do and don’t just put the recycling in the trash, so you have at least two trucks, that’s ten trucks going down your road every week. And then some services send out a separate truck for yard waste, grass clippings, and weeds. So, you could have 15 trucks going down the roads. And those trucks are very heavy. And it’s not just the weight. They stop. Rolling we’re told is less of an issue as opposed to them stopping in front of a house and that weight just sits there. And then they turn, and the way they turn, their tires actually skid because they’re not all wheel steering. So, the actual mid tires will skid around the corner (unintelligible). So, there are many advantages to cutting that down, but there are disadvantages too. Smith is trying to be open-minded about the two sides. He’s personally in favor of it, just for the road damage that’s occurring, and the number of trucks on our road, the safety issues, the cost. We know we can get the cost down considerably. Smith is paying $93 a quarter with Waste Management, and there are people in the meeting saying they are only paying $48 a quarter. Well, that’s quite a difference. And then there’s the visual thing that Fuller brought up. You’ve got trash cans out in your street just about every day of the week, depending on what service you have. But you don’t want to put anybody out of business either. We’ll look at all sides.

Haven said he was interested in the laying of the asphalt on Main Street. It looked like a half inch, and again, that’s just eyeballing it. What are we getting? Smith said well, what you’re not seeing is that they ground it down to about two-three inches first and then they filled it back up. So, what you’re seeing is the new asphalt that is net/net about a half inch higher than the old asphalt, but they did grind it down so you’re getting (unintelligible crosstalk between Haven and Smith). Haven said we’re getting about an inch then overall. Smith said oh no, it’s more. You’re getting at least two-three inches of total new asphalt. Haven said wow. He didn’t think about that and thought it wasn’t going to last very long. Three inches.

Haven asked if there were any other comments or questions for Smith relative to the report.

Agenda Item #9 – Motion: Acceptance of the Consent Agenda as Presented (Video time mark 0:19:47):

• • 04-25-2022 Final Minutes (page 8/40 of the council packet)
  • 05-09-2022 Draft Minutes (page 10/40 of the council packet)
  • 05-23-022 Treasurer’s Report (page 12/40 of the council packet)
  • 05-11-2022 Revenue and Expenditures for the Period Ending 04-30-2022 (page 13/40 of the council packet)
  • Carlisle/Wortman April invoices (page 23/40 of the council packet)

Haven said that this is a combination of the final minutes for our 4-25 meeting, draft minutes for 5-9, and our treasurer’s report. And our treasurer is here tonight with us. Greg Coté [treasurer] take a bow. Thanks for joining us for these budget discussions.

Haven said he would entertain a motion to accept the consent agenda as they have it in their packet.

Motion by Avery; second Fuller.

Haven asked if there was any discussion about this.

Haven said hearing none – [Pardee raised his hand].

Pardee said where it was approved $2,800 from the pickup truck repairs budget so that we could get that, is that still in abeyance? Pardee said he was thinking that we didn’t have any money in the pickup truck budget. Smith said no, but in the proposal, he had the departments identified that would spend this, so we are over on the maintenance budget, but we’re pulling monies from some other sources. Pardee asked if they would amend officially at some point. Smith said yes, right, we will amend the budget, absolutely. Pardee thanked Smith. Smith said in total it ended up being $2,499, so slightly below the $2,800 proposed. Haven said good.

Haven asked if there were any other comments or questions.

No other comments or questions.

Unanimous voice vote to accept the consent agenda as presented.

Agenda Item #10, Old Business (Video time mark 0:21:34):

Haven said that there is no old business.

Agenda Item #11, New Business

Item 11a – Motion: Movie Night Proposal; Patti Gilman Movie Night proposed in Depot Park (Video time mark 0:21:37):

Haven said that this was a motion for a movie night, and he’ll bet Patti Gilman was here somewhere.

Gilman said that she wanted to propose to do a movie. She thinks that last summer – interrupting Gilman, Haven asked Gilman if she would come up to the podium, and she agreed.

Gilman said that last summer she thought there was a couple of movies in Depot Park, but she wasn’t there so she doesn’t know how they were played. But she read an amazing book, and it’s The Jesus I Just Saw, and there’s a movie, it’s called the Jesus Film that was created in 1979. It’s been all over the world in 1,400 different languages. What she wanted to propose was to do the children’s version of it. It’s one hour long, and it’s basically the birth, his life, his crucifixion, his resurrection, his ascension, his life of love and peace and servanthood, and she would pay for it. She’s already talked to the Jesus Film company, and they said there’s no copyright issues because obviously, they want everybody to know about Jesus. She wanted to play it, maybe on a Sunday night. She’d put some things out maybe in the Clarkston News and on Facebook, and anybody that would like to come can come. She’ll serve water and juice boxes and popcorn, and they can watch the movie. And if it’s successful, then she might go to Lake Orion, then she might go to Oxford, then she might go to Pontiac, then she might go to Flint. Over nine billion people have seen this movie, and it is really powerful, but she was watching the kid’s version of it. It’s through the eyes of a child. So, it’s super cool, it’s easy to understand, and it’s just a message of hope and love and peace and servanthood. We’re in troubled times. We’re coming through a pandemic, fears of more pandemics coming, we’ve got a lot of fear in the world right now, and she thinks if we can bring something that offers a little bit of hope, a little bit of joy, maybe a little bit of recognition. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to come, but if you want to come, you can. So, she just wanted to see if she could play it.

Haven asked if she had any insurance for holding the city harmless in case of something. He didn’t know how she would even do that with this. Gilman said she’s going to get hold of the Chamber [Clarkston Area Chamber of Commerce] because she thinks that the Chamber put on the other movies. Haven said that he thought that was a good idea. She actually talked to the Chamber to figure out how they got, because she wasn’t here, so she didn’t know how they used a screen. She thought it was a blowup screen. But the woman that Gilman talked to that she thinks is new to the Chamber didn’t have an answer for Gilman, and then she didn’t get back to Gilman. Gilman called a couple of times, and they didn’t get back. She doesn’t know if they have that, or if she needs to get it. She could get insurance if she needed it for a night. She could do that.

Haven said so, it’s an event. Gilman said it’s an event. Haven said all the precautions like we normally do. Gilman agreed. Haven said it’s not unlike church services. He thought we’ve had church services in the park as well. Gilman said oh yes, we’ve had music, so there’s a lot. And she may have music before. She can have Becka (spelling?). She can go out there and play some music while they are setting up, and just bring the community together. Gilman thinks it would be pretty cool.

Haven thanked Gilman for bringing it to them. Haven and Gilman asked if there were any thoughts or comments. Haven said that Gilman lives on East Washington, and she agreed. Speagle asked what the name of the move was, and Gilman said it is The Jesus Story, The Jesus Film, but it’s a kid’s version, and she can email it to her; she actually emailed it to Smith, so he’s got a copy of it. Haven said he’d like to see the children’s version; that would be interesting. Gilman said she could email it to him. It’s pretty good. She was watching tonight. It’s not as long. (Haven made an unintelligible comment.) Gilman said it’s super, it’s really good. She thinks the kids would like it and the parents would like it too.

Gilman asked if there were any other questions.

There were no other questions.

City Attorney Tom Ryan said he would like to know more about the movie. Gilman said she could email it to him if he’d like to see it. Ryan said that would be fine then, sure. Gilman said of course, like any other movie, it’s a choice, if you want to come, you can come. Ryan said except that it’s a city park, it’s a public park, and there’s a little more to it than that, unfortunately. Ryan said so, he guesses he’d like to take a look at that. Ryan asked if there was a date that she planned on doing this. Gilman said no, that’s why she’s here. Smith said that most Fridays and Saturdays are booked, so she thought she could do a Sunday evening at dusk. Gilman said that would work. Or even during the week; she doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter to her. (Unintelligible crosstalk between Haven and Ryan). Haven said it’s our attorney. (Unintelligible crosstalk between Haven and Ryan.) Gilman said sure, OK. Ryan thanked Gilman. Gilman said he was welcome.

Smith said OK, so we’ll table any kind of motion for tonight. Gilman asked if Smith wants to forward it to the attorney. Smith said he would forward it and take care of that. Gilman said OK.

Smith said so, we had put this in as a motion even though there’s not a motion sheet in the packet. We just thought it was something that you could motion on the fly, but if Ryan wants to look at it first, then they can table it for a vote at the next meeting. Haven said they would bring it back at the next meeting. They need to make a decision. Smith agreed.

Avery said that they need more information. Date, scope, insurance. You can’t just give a blanket approval without information. Smith asked Gilman to check with the Chamber to see how they do their insurance and see if she could even piggyback on what they do already. Gilman said she has an insurance person. Smith said OK.

Item 11b – Discussion: Ordinance Enforcement Officer; Introduction of Ordinance Enforcement Officer Stacy Kingsbury (Video time mark 0:27:23):

Haven said that this is a discussion from the ordinance enforcement officer. Stacy Kingsbury is here. Haven asked Kingsbury to come up front.

Smith said so we’ve talked about for a while the need for them to meet Kingsbury. So, Kingsbury, as they know, is an employee of Carlisle/Wortman. She’s part of their enforcement division, so she works with Craig Strong, who is our building inspector. Kingsbury is very knowledgeable. She’s done this in other communities, so she’s very knowledgeable. She has a real working knowledge of our ordinances. She’s gone through the 300-page document, so she’s got a good knowledge of what our ordinances say, or they’re not really all that different from other communities. Smith will let Kingsbury explain herself and the things that she does on a regular basis. Kingsbury has been a real asset to the team. She’s very knowledgeable and very diligent about getting out there and talking to people. She welcomes talking to the residents and trying to resolve the issues. Smith thinks that this is the most important aspect of the message, we’re not about punitive yelling and screaming at the residents. That’s not what we’re doing here. We’re just trying to get, maintain a quality look of our community and Kingsbury understands that philosophy in everything that she does on a daily basis. Haven said excellent.

Haven asked Kingsbury how many days a week she is here. Kingsbury said she’s only here one day. Haven said on Tuesdays. Kingsbury said it was like half a day. As far as our community, it’s one of the better communities that she’s been in. Haven said that was nice to hear. Kingsbury said she’s noticed that residents take care of their yards, take pride in the community, so that’s why she’s only here four hours one day a week. If it ever came down to it and they needed her more, she could do that for us, but she doesn’t see an issue with that at the moment.

Haven said he talked to Smith today, and the first thing that came to mind was our 300-page ordinance document. It’s intimidating, but like Kingsbury said, it’s probably not all that different than in other places. Kingsbury agreed. Haven asked if she had kind of a running checklist. He’s sure she has much of this in her head, but it helps them to know that, because they get questions a lot about enforcement. Kingsbury said she will do rounds. When she first comes into town, she comes in the morning. She drives around slowly, and she checks out the residents’ properties. She looks for vehicles that haven’t moved, have flat tires, anything that would cause blight. Trash building up on the side of the house that you would see from the street. She’s not allowed to go into backyards. She just can’t go onto your property and say “oh, you have a lot of junk back there, I’m going to write you a citation.” Kingsbury needs a neighbor to come and talk to them, to say “hey, Bob is not taking care of his backyard.” Well, then Kingsbury needs Nancy who just made the complaint to let Kingsbury into her back yard to see. Once that’s done, Kingsbury can take pictures, which she does. She takes pictures of everything between the grass and the cars, so that way, if anyone ever wants to question, you know, “I mowed my lawn,” well, here’s the picture on this date. You know, she has proof. If you want to fight it, you can fight it, but you know, Kingsbury writes letters. First and foremost, she’s not here to write a ticket right away. She sends a nice letter out saying, hey, you know, according to this ordinance of the city, basically, you know, take care of this within a week. It’s very simple, very nice. She’s not just saying, hey, you’re going to do this now or you’re going to get a ticket.

Luginski asked what things Kingsbury was seeing, what things come up most often that she’s seen so far. Kingsbury said right now, the things that she’s noticed, because we have a historic district, the houses. There’s a couple of houses that Kingsbury and Smith have talked about that need to have paint done. With the grass season just starting, there’s a lot of grass and people thinking that it’s “No Mow May.” She’s not sure if they have heard that yet. Haven said no. Kingsbury said that there are a lot of communities that are trying to get No Mow May adopted to save bees, so people don’t want to mow their lawns. Luginski said he did hear that. Dandelions and stuff. Kingsbury agreed and said it makes it worse. By the time June hits, your grass is so tall you need – interrupting Kingsbury, Luginski said you need goats. Kingsbury said a brush hogger. Kingsbury said that right now, you haven’t said that we’re going to do this, so she has to write nice letters to people and tell them to take care of their yards. Kingsbury said that there’s a couple of cars that she’s had residents call about their neighbors, you know, this guy hasn’t moved his car in a week, you know, there’s flat tires. OK, Kingsbury will watch it. If he doesn’t take care of it in a week, Kingsbury will send him a letter. The letter is to start communication. She puts her cell phone number down so they can call her, and they can try to figure out how long it’s going to take them. She tries to give vehicles roughly about two weeks, like if it’s a tire or something. Grass is a week. She thinks you can find someone to cut your lawn within a week unless something has come up with your family or whatever.

Haven asked if the ordinance says that it has to run, you have to be able to turn the key and it starts and it’s licensed, right? Kingsbury agreed. It has to have the proper tags on it, it has to be operable. That is your ordinance, and that is also the property maintenance ordinance that you have adopted, so you have two things Kingsbury can use.

Haven asked (unintelligible) about the grass ordinance. Kingsbury said six inches is the length of our grass.

Haven asked what else was in the ordinance for property maintenance. Kingsbury said it depends, houses, like she said, blight. The city’s main thing is like garbage outside. The one thing that she noticed in our ordinance that we don’t have at the moment is the use of trash cans, which is something that she hasn’t seen before because she thinks our ordinance is older. She thinks that we should adopt something to that standard, where everyone has to have their garbage in a trash can. That helps keeping the insects, the rodents, things like that. Haven asked if she meant as opposed to a bag perhaps. Kingsbury said yes, a lot of times people will just throw the bag outside of the building. Well, that’s sitting there for a week. Well, then you have racoons and things that are coming up and destroying it. Haven agreed. Kingsbury said it’s the same when you throw it out to the road.

Fuller said when he got on the council, and this was last fall, this issue about blighted homes and working with people to get them up to standards and so forth, which started way before that. Is there like a deadline, where you’ve got to get the paint done now finally, or at least something? Kingsbury said she doesn’t think there’s actually a deadline that states like you have three weeks or whatever. She thinks that they try and work with people. She knows that we have nice homes, but people don’t have the income to take care of it right away, so you kind of have to bend a little bit to try and make it work. Kingsbury said like, and she couldn’t remember the gentleman’s name now, that we’re dealing with – Smith said on North Main, yes. (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Smith said that one of the homeowners on North Main that has come up, you know, getting his house painted in a timely manner, we gave him a deadline that if he doesn’t have the house painted by August 15^th, which was the date that Smith gave him working with Kingsbury, because she’s written letters to him. We have to put some kind of stake in the ground, so we did say August 15^th, because the thought was if you’re not going to do it, then we’re going to have to hire a contractor and paint your house for you. They would have to work with Ryan on this, but this is the way that other things have been done. If you’re not going to do it, if you don’t plow your driveway, you don’t shovel your sidewalk, you don’t mow your grass, in the same way, does the city step in and do this and then bill him on his taxes, probably his taxes. But this has been going on the third summer, and he’s just not doing it. So, what do we do? Do we have to take legal action, effectively step in? Smith knows this is kind of a grey area that they haven’t gotten into before, but we hope to not go there. We don’t want to go there. We don’t want to be painting somebody’s house. We’d like the homeowner to maintain the control of the property, but if they’re not doing it, what do we do?

Haven asked Ryan what he thought about any kind of precedent for this, state-wide or whatever. Ryan said Kingsbury was on the right track. You don’t want to do that if you don’t have to. Ryan asked if Oakland County’s small chore program has been contacted by these people to try to get them to give them some money to do it. Smith said that they’ve notified the homeowner of this program and told them that financial help is available if they need it. So, they have told him about the program, but whether he’s applied, Smith doesn’t know.

Fuller asked if there was anyone who was physically or cognitively disabled who is unable to complete this work, work that we’ve run into in the past where maybe the community needs to step up, or is it just a matter of disinterest or financial or whatever that’s causing the problem. Smith said he honestly doesn’t know. He was painting last summer. Fuller said he’s just talking in general, not this person (unintelligible). Smith said they take that into consideration. Kingsbury always checks with Smith before she writes a violation or a citation. He thinks they’ve written one or two citations. All the rest are just warnings, and it never goes beyond that. But if they hear of any kind of special circumstances, you know, one of their parents just died, or they’ve just lost their job, or something like that that would really constitute a logical explanation why they are not taking care of this, then they would absolutely take that into consideration. They’re not in penalize mode here; they’re just trying to maintain a quality look of our town. Smith said that if they learn of that, even after they write the warning notice and they come back and say, yeah, I’m sorry, my lawnmower just died, OK, we’ll take a little consideration for that, but if they said my wife or my spouse just died, that would be a significant thing that we would take into consideration. But the house painting issue has become a problem. When Smith notified him about this, he hasn’t heard a word from him since. Smith thinks he’s upset right now, but we’ll see. Fuller thanked Smith.

Haven asked if there were any other questions for Kingsbury. Haven told Kingsbury that they were glad she’s here.

Pardee raised his hand and Haven asked him if he’d like to ask a question. Pardee said yes.

Pardee said he gave Kingsbury a copy of today’s Oakland Press that features on the front-page Oakland County’s program to help individuals who need some financial help, and we talk about the millions of dollars that Oakland County has gotten from the federal government as a result of COVID, so they are adding to that. Pardee thinks that it’s great that the Oakland Press is publicizing this for the public. You’ve got to be a subscriber. Pardee asked Smith for the name of the person who spoke to us about this program from Oakland County. Pardee thought it was Scott Bees (spelling?). Smith didn’t recall. Pardee said that there’s now a head of this program, and this article lists two numbers to call. Haven thought we had a brochure. Smith said yes. Pardee said this expanded it. Haven asked if this was part of that. Pardee said yes. Millions of dollars that the federal government has provided, and it needs to be spent by 2024. Haven said but the owner probably has to apply. Pardee agreed. You have to apply, and there’s income requirements. Haven said that there’s a procedure you have to go through.

Kingsbury said basically, it’s probably safe to say there are programs to help you. Like she said that first letter is to make communication with them. Once they call and talk to her, they are showing her that they are interested in getting the help, and if they say you know, I can’t afford it, then she can always say that there are these programs out there for you. She’s not there to beat them down and take their money from them and make them lose their homes or anything of the sort. You guys take pride in your community, and she wants to help with that.

Ryan said that they’ve been talking about this house for a couple of years, so his suggestion if they’ve given them an August 15^th deadline, then next month, in June, you should proactively give them a violation. You’ve already put them on notice, right? Kingsbury said yes. Ryan said that we may have to get into court, and it’s going to take a month or two after August, then we’re going to get into November, and it’s going to be the season’s gone, so we need, he suggests, that Kingsbury engages with them earlier about it and about this information from the County, and hopefully, they’ll apply, but if they don’t, and August 15^th comes and goes, we need to get into district court to get an affirmative order to allow us to enter the property and to make the repairs, and if you send a bill and it’s not paid, we’ll put it on the December tax bill or something. We’re going to run out of time.

Pardee said that he’s been in this for three years. Pardee’s question, and he was hoping that Kingsbury was going to be able to suggest what Pardee would call an escalation policy that council could approve, such that the escalation would apply to somebody that’s been alerted for one year, or two years, or three years. Ryan said sir, we don’t need that, respectfully. We’ve got somebody on board who is a professional, that knows what she’s doing, she knows how to handle it, and she’s going to escalate it on her own. She knows how to do that. Pardee said for three years – (interrupting Pardee), Ryan said that she hasn’t been here for three years. She’s been here like two months, OK? We haven’t had the enforcement authority and the enforcement mechanism that we have now. Pardee said he lives on North Main – (interrupting Pardee), Ryan said he knows he does. Pardee said between 148, Morgans, and 200 – (interrupting Pardee), Ryan said he knows all that, again, OK? Pardee said all those buildings fit into this category except one and the grey rental appears to be OK. Edison cottage, with the Lamborghini in the driveway, has got the grass and dandelions two feet tall. Fuller said he didn’t think it was appropriate to be talking about specific people and so forth. Ryan said he didn’t either. He thinks they have it covered; they have a person involved. Pardee said he would be quiet. Ryan said he doesn’t have to be quiet. He’s just saying they have a good person involved here now that’s going to follow through on it. Ryan said he’s said that he understands that this has become a chronic problem and he’s just informing Kingsbury that she’s on the right track. We just need to front-load this a little bit more, give the information, hopefully they’ll do it, encourage them, but we’ve got to give them a deadline so if we have to go to district court, we will, and get an affirmative order from a judge allowing us to do that. And then will send a bill and put it on the tax bill.

Haven said he likes Kingbury’s demeanor (unintelligible) but you have to kind of pull the string on at some point, and the recourse then is to do it and put it on their tax bill so we get paid for it. Kingsbury said and then that’s the plan. Here, she knows that she has to get with Ryan later on and discuss the next steps as far as citations, like actually writing a ticket. Ryan agreed.

Avery said to Pardee’s point, he doesn’t think it’s a bad idea to have some sort of mechanisms in place that will help Kingsbury. Does she need that from the council or have Smith put it together? Kingsbury agreed. Avery continued, where it says, OK, thirty days out from initial contact, this is the next step, or sixty days out, then we need a citation, ninety days. We have to kind of stepladder it up, so we know where we are at in the process, because if you do it one way for one person, then you do it for somebody else a different way, you’ve got issues with that too. Ryan said that 99.9%, 99.8%, we get compliance. That’s what Kingsbury is saying. Avery said he understands. Ryan said this is that .2% where we are going to have to step it up. Kingsbury said she hasn’t crossed that bridge yet; everyone has been really good about it. (Talking over Kingsbury), Ryan said that the small minority shouldn’t wag the program. He understands we’ve got a beautiful community. There are a couple of problem properties, which we’ve got somebody on board now that’s going to take care of it, which is great.

Haven said we are in a sensitive situation and are asking the right questions. Pardee said two of the properties are historically contributing. According to the HDC [Historic District Commission], they are contributing properties.

(Interrupting Pardee), Cara Catallo asked Pardee why he needs to talk all the time. She has a question. Can we have like, another person talk for a while? Questioning, Chet said he was sorry? Haven noted that Catallo just raised her hand, OK. Catallo said she would let it go a little longer, but she just, like, you know. Haven asked Catallo what she would like to say. Catallo said it’s a never-ending monologue. She was just curious how many cities that you service, like how many cities do you overlook for Carlisle/Wortman? (Unintelligible.) Kingsbury said as of right now, this one and, she’s all over the place right now, another one. She has one other community now as far as code enforcement. Kingsbury said she does other things. She does admin stuff also. She does rental inspections for homes, so she kind of knows what she’s looking for on the outside of the homes and stuff like that, so if there’s any issues, you know, like the property is falling apart, she knows what she’s looking for that could be dangerous or anything like that.

Haven thanked Kingsbury. He asked if anyone else had any other comments or questions.

No other comments or questions.

Haven thanked Kingsbury for coming. Kingsbury said she would get back to Ryan.

Agenda Item #12 – Public Hearing 2022/23 FY Budget (Video time mark 0:47:33):

Haven said that the next item on the agenda, and probably the reason many of you came here, is our discussion, or the public hearing rather, on the budget. We’ll need a stop and start time on the public hearing. Ryan said starting for sure, and then when we’re done. Haven said they would record when they’re done.

Item 12a – Call to order (Video time mark 0:47:50):

Haven said that they would start this at 7:47.

Item 12b – Presentation of the Draft 22/23 FY Budget (Video time mark 0:47:56):

• • Draft 2022/2023 Fiscal Year Budget (page 25/40 of the council packet)

Haven asked if Smith was going to present, and Smith said yes. Smith said that he would have Coté advance the slides. (Unintelligible discussion between Smith and Coté. Smith walked up to the podium.)

Haven asked if this was online so that people could print it off. Smith said absolutely.

Smith said at the outset, there were two minor additions to the document today. We did update the document, and what’s online right now, what’s in the packet, has been corrected. Smith said he would go through those revisions as we get to those slides.

Smith said yes, we need to open the public hearing. Haven and Ryan said that they did, at 7:47 p.m. Haven said we are going to fly through this.

Smith said so, as they’ve done in years past, they would like to present a summary of the budget. The finance committee, which is made up of Smith, Haven, Luginski, Avery, and Coté, and Pardee typically attends those as well. The finance committee has been meeting for three months, working on the revisions as we’ve gone through them, and this is the culmination of that.

Smith asked Coté to go to the next slide and said that one thing he likes to show at the outset is where do my tax dollars go? So, this is a question that’s often asked of Coté and Smith, and they think that all of their tax bill comes to the city. That is not true. In this section, the purple 46% is what comes to the city. So, $.46 cents of every dollar you send in your taxes actually comes to the city, but the rest largely goes to the schools or the county, but $.46 comes here.

Smith said on the next page, these are the millage rates. So, as you know, the Headlee rollback requires our millage rates to come down every year and what this chart is showing is starting in 2014, when this went into effect, we started to step down. So, over time, and every year our maximum allowable and our levy fall down. The maximum allowable is what we could charge if we chose to, and then the total levy is after we’ve taken out the library millage. So, this year, with the Headlee rollback, year over year, our maximum allowable was 12.1141. This year, with Headlee rollback, it becomes 11.8330 mills but after the library .691 comes out, then what we are actually proposing for a millage is 11.1420. That’s a 2.5% year over year decrease. So that’s what this table is showing.

[For an in-depth discussion regarding how your taxes are determined and why the Headlee rollback is important to you, please see “Let’s Talk About Taxes,” which can be found at this link: https://www.clarkstonsecrets.com/lets-talk-about-taxes/]

Smith said they would go on to the next slide and see how that 11.1421 [11.1420] millage rate applies. So, from the county, the county does all of our assessing, they give us every year the assessed value and the taxable value. So, what this is showing, which is good news for all of our residents, is your assessed value is climbing year over year. This year, it went up 5.8%, but last year, it went up 9.6%, almost double digit increases last year. This year, it was a little less, or about 6%. That’s the assessed value, what the county thinks your home is worth.

Continuing, Smith said then you have the taxable value, which is the number that you pay taxes on, and that also climbs every year, but it’s capped. Per Proposal A, it’s either the rate of inflation or 5% maximum, whichever is less. So, OK, you’re probably sitting in your chair saying wait a minute, you just said 5% or less, but the bar at the right shows 7.1%. How is that possible? You just told me 5% max. Well, when you sell your house, and in the last year, there were a lot of real estate sales, when you sell your house, that cap comes off, and this is a common theme that we hear from new residents. Well, Grandma Jones that sold me that house and living there for 35 years, she was paying low taxes and then now I get my tax bill, and it’s much higher. Why? Well, when you sell your house, that Proposal A cap comes off and that gets reassessed. So, what happened last year is it went up more than 5% and that’s largely attributable to the fact that there were a lot of home sales last year. Ryan said or improvements. Smith said or improvements, yes, that can come into play as well. So, that helps the city, because we get back some of the holdback that’s been pulling us back, that 5%. But what you’re seeing at the bottom here is the county assessor is saying the assessed value is $75, almost $76 million, and the taxable value is just over $52 million. So, here Smith goes with this calculation at the bottom, the 11.1420 that we just talked about on the previous slide is our millage, our proposed millage rate. We multiply that times the $52 million that the county assessor says our properties are valued at, taxable-wise, and that comes up with a tax revenue that we can expect of $580,000 a year. So, $580,000 is what we can expect in taxable revenue coming into the city. Smith said that he and Coté like to be a little bit conservative on this and not go to the $580,000 that we calculate here.

Smith said that what you’ll see on the next slide is we’ve stopped at $575,000. Smith asked Coté to go onto the next slide where they will show that at the top. Under the 2023 proposed column, you see $575,000. We didn’t put in the full $580,000. Even though we expect that, we’d like to be a little bit on the conservative side in case there’s some issue maybe with personal taxes, so we hold back a little bit there. But that’s still a very healthy 3.8% increase year over year. $554,000 last year, the current fiscal year we’re in, going up to $575,000, that’s a 3.8% revenue increase.

Smith said that the rest of the numbers here on page five are all of our revenue sources. Interest and penalty, cable TV, in-kind fees, permit fees, dog licenses. Smith said that he wasn’t going to go through all these, but he’ll cull out a couple in particular. About half-way down, state revenue sharing, sales tax. So, this is the money, and he didn’t even put the slide in this year’s deck, but they’ll recall in previous years, Smith pointed out that Michigan is dead last when it comes to the state sharing with local municipalities their sales tax revenue. You hear over and over again, and you’ve probably read it on your own, that the state is making a huge amount of sales tax revenue this year because people are buying more and more things, so the state is making a ton on sales tax. So, it’s encouraging to see that they are passing some of this down the line. So, this year our state revenue sharing is going up from $83,594 to $87,604, a 4.8% increase. That’s not huge, but it’s better than going in the other direction which it has a couple times since Coté and Smith started, so we’re encouraged to see a positive movement on that.

Smith said that there were other items to call out. Gazebo rental, you see 156% increase there, that’s because there were just a lot of weddings during the last year. People are doing outdoor weddings, so we are renting the gazebo more than we have in the past. And then, at the very bottom, and we’ll talk much more about this as we get later into the presentation. Transfer into the fund balance – we’re proposing bringing in $116,000 from the fund balance into our operational budget. The source of that $116,000, $96,000 is those ARPA [American Rescue Plan Act] funds. We have half of it in hand right now. The other half was supposed to be received last week. It hasn’t come in yet (Coté agreed). So, we’re watching closely for that, but Smith thinks the state is good for it. So, we have $96,000 in ARPA funds and then we’re going to pull out $20,000 from the fund balance to fund all of our capital improvements, and we’ll see more of that as we get into the subsequent slides.

Smith said that’s really the revenue section. He asked if there were any questions on that before he went into the expense side.

Fuller noted that Smith said he was projecting a 3% increase from the state and so forth, and that’s a good thing, but inflation is eating up a lot of that (unintelligible). Smith agreed. Fuller said that we are anticipating that all the supplies that we have to buy have gotten more expensive. Smith agreed and said toilet paper, copier paper, whatever. All of those supplies are going up. Gasoline, everything is going up, so we have to be cautious there of the inflation.

Audience member Cass Wisniewski asked to be recognized for a question, provided his address, and said that he is Pardee’s neighbor. Wisniewski said that when Smith mentions a $20,000 fund balance, he’s basically taking it from the piggy bank of prior years to fund a future project. Smith said essentially yes, Wisniewski is right, but the fund balance is like your checking account balance. If you had budgeted monies for let’s say a home repair and you didn’t do them, those funds just stayed in your checking account balance. You think you’re taking money out of the fund balance, you’re going to keep draining that until there’s nothing left, but in reality what happens year after year is we put money into the budget and we can’t spend it all. Pardee was just saying, realistically, how can you get all this done. You don’t have enough boots on the ground to get some of these projects done. So, we plan for them, and you’ll see there’s another aggressive capital improvement plan for this year. In all likelihood, we are not going to get it all done. Smith would like to plan for it, and he’s here in front of council asking for approval to spend up to this, but in all reality, we’re not going to get it all done. So, that money, when you don’t spend it, it just stays in the checking account and it’s available. At the end of the fiscal year though, if you don’t spend it, the budget goes away and it just stays in your checking account. What Smith has to do at the start of the new year is ask for it, he didn’t spend it last year, he wants to take it back out and put it into the budget this year, and there are a couple examples of that.

Wisniewski asked Smith how much is in the piggy bank. Smith said that we will get to that. There is a slide on the fund balances. That’s a very important question, probably the most important aspect of this when we get into the details, so we will get to that.

Smith asked Coté to look at 101, expenditures. Smith said that what we are showing here is a total of $879,000, the same number you saw on the previous slide that we were able to accommodate. With the $116,000 brought in, we were able to balance the $879,000.

Smith said in terms of details on this, as you know, we’ve included in this budget a 3% salary increase for the staff. We’ve included 5% increases for law enforcement and fire protection. Those are generally union-negotiated increases that have to be met. We’ve had anywhere from 5%-7% increases for insurance. This year it was a little closer to 5% rather than 7-8% that we had feared, so that was good news.

Smith said that there were other increases, and he wanted to go through the list. Elections, 37% increase. We just, with all the focus on elections, we have to really dot the I’s and cross the T’s at every election. Smith isn’t saying that Speagle didn’t before, but they are redoubling their efforts to make sure that there’s nothing missed on elections. If we need more people, if we need more supplies, we have to make sure that nothing is missed. Smith said he’s not saying that as a critical comment on anybody, he’s just saying we have to have the monies available for elections. So, that was an increase.

Smith said he talked about police and fire. Those go up about 5% every year. The Historic District Commission asked for a 40% increase. That was just for more consultant hours, so they’ve asked for a budget increase. Workmen’s comp [compensation], that insurance has gone down considerably, so Smith is pleased to see that. Smith said those are the main items. There is a transfer out to the 203 and 401. The monies came into the 101 but we have to shift it out into the other budget accounts where it will be spent. So, that’s just a formality. Moving it into one of the other budget accounts that Smith will talk about in a minute. Smith said that’s the 101 account.

Fuller said he was curious about a 14.7% increase for council and wanted to know what that was. Smith said that’s about $1,700-$1,800. That’s because of the couple of conferences that Smith and Haven have gone to. Those are covered under the council budget. So, dues and conferences are something that they try to do more of. This is something that that, you know, as a small municipality, we have to rely on our experts. We’ve talked about that many times. Going to these training sessions is really how we learn about some of these things. Haven said that they try not to stay overnight. Smith agreed and said that they drive if needed. Fuller said he didn’t know; that’s a great way to go (unintelligible). Smith agreed and said that’s what that increase is driven by – dues and conferences. Wisniewski asked if most of them are in Lansing, and Smith said a lot of them are in Lansing. Haven said or Grand Rapids. Smith agreed. Smith said that they didn’t increase in council wages or fees per year. We haven’t done that for a few years. That’s all in dues and conference.

Wisniewski asked about the debt service. There was nothing in 2021-2022, but you had $3,000 in – (interrupting Wisniewski), Coté said we did but we just broke it out this year as opposed to last year. It was lumped together with principal and interest. That’s the interest portion on the debt for the building. Haven said that we are paying ourselves back. Coté and Smith agreed. Coté said historically, it was just principal and interest. Haven said that we borrowed from the sewer and water fund, and we reallocated that. Coté agreed.

Pardee asked if the $22,000 came down or is it $22,000 plus $3,000. Pardee thought that each year we are paying $22,000 back. Coté said yes, it is coming down. We just didn’t show it last year. Coté and Smith both said that last year, it was lumped together. Haven said a percent of the balance. Coté agreed. Smith said this year, they are breaking it out as a separate line item just for transparency, for the audit. It’s just easier to keep track of it. Pardee said (unintelligible) that shows under leased facility. Coté agreed.

Wisnewski asked if the variance percentage is zero. Smith agreed. It results in a calculation error, so he just had to override that. $3,000 over zero results in a calculation error.

Smith asked if there were any other questions on appropriations.

No questions.

Smith said on the next page we have our 202 and 203 accounts. These are our major street and our local street accounts. The 202, our major street, pays for itself. In fact, there’s money left over. It gets moved down to local streets. You might wonder how it pays for itself. Well, this is our Act 51 monies, so every time Jimi [Turner, Department of Public Works Supervisor] is out in the streets with the manlift, he can enter those hours spent on that piece of equipment, and we get credit for those hours from the state. That’s the Act 51. And because of his diligence in getting this reported, we have $76,500 coming into our major streets, and down below, you’ll see $25,500 coming into our local streets. Those aren’t a big change year over year, but they do really help support these two operations, which is largely snow plowing in the winter and street sweeping in the summer. So, the (unintelligible) at the top, when you take away the wages, because there are DPW [Department of Public Works] wages included in this, we actually have $10,257 left over. So, we moved that down to the account right below, the 203 account, so that’s an income to the 203 account. The 203 account needed another $1,400 to balance, so we moved that in from the general fund. So, these numbers are pretty much set either by the Act 51 account or the salaries for the DPW staff and our unemployment insurance.

Continuing, Smith said going on to the last slide in the details here, and this is our capital project fund. So, this is really where a lot of the fun stuff happens. This is where we actually make some capital improvements in our community. So, we’ve backed into the revenue. Let’s jump right to appropriations and then we’ll come back to revenue. So, on the appropriations side, we are proposing $5,500 for building and grounds. A lot of that is the Friends of Depot Park Committee. So, they receive $5,500. Highway, streets, and bridges, this is $8,400, a slight year over year increase. Professional contractual services will stay about the same.

Smith continued, saying now, the sidewalk repair. So, last year, we had budgeted $8,000. So far, we haven’t spent that. We were literally holding onto that $8,000 because we thought we were going to need that, and may still, for the seven driveways on Main Street. We talked about their pavers that need to be repaired. That’s how we want to use our sidewalk budget, even though there are other sidewalks in town that have cracks in them or have been heaved by a tree root, we felt the sidewalks on Main Street, which are kind of two things at once, they’re a driveway, so they’re a road, but they’re also a sidewalk that people walk across, so they’re a sidewalk. So, it’s kind of two in one. We feel that we need to address that first and foremost. Those pavers that are decayed have left holes, they literally fall apart and weed dust and dust blows out of there and get washed out in the rains, and as a result, there are trip hazards in those paver sidewalks. So, we’re proposing this year, $18,000 for the sidewalk portion and another $68,000 directly below it for the road portion of those seven driveways. So, those are what we are proposing be the primary focus of our sidewalks and road efforts this year.

Smith said that there are other things going on besides, on Main Street, obviously what’s going on right now. We have a Clarkston Road that will be repaved this summer. At this time, it doesn’t look like that’s going to cost the city any money. If anything, we’ll use our tri-party funds. So, if you’re not aware, there is a program that the city reengaged with about a year or two ago, two years ago, to subscribe to the tri-party fund program. So, the tri-party is the county, the state, and the city. So, we’re in this tri-party fund and we can use, we get funds allocated to us by the county and the state, and we can use those for a project that involves all three organizations. Smith said that he has about $25,000 in tri-party funds. He can’t use it for Church Street, but he could use it for Clarkston Road, so if there are any upgrades that we can do at the time of paving Clarkston Road, he does have some monies separate from our operational budget that he can use to help us cover any expenses for the Clarkston Road repaving. Haven asked for clarification on the amount, and Smith said $24,800 something. Continuing, Smith said so this $18,000 and $68,000 shown on this schedule is all tentatively for the seven driveways on Main Street. Smith thinks that has to be our priority. It’s not a problem for cars driving, but it sure is a problem for pedestrians.

Smith said resurfacing of parking lots, so this isn’t for resurfacing this year. The $11,500 is for sealcoating and restriping. So, the plan is to re-sealcoat and restripe the Washington and Main parking lot; the Depot Road parking lot; the lot that a lot of people call Rudy’s, but it’s really Mill Steet, that’s our parking lot, those seven spots alongside of Rudy’s; and the Depot Road angle parking. Those four parking lots are all ours. Technically, there’s a fifth one on Church Street, the angled parking at Honcho there. All those are our parking lots, and we really should be maintaining those by doing sealcoating and restriping because that’s what’s going to get more longevity out of those investments. Smith thinks that $11,500 is money well-spent, and as soon as this budget is approved, Smith will try to do that in July or August at the latest. Next on the list is DPW trucks and large equipment. Smith bumped that from $2,000 to $2,950 because we are really running into a lot of age problems with our DPW equipment, and so we will have to bump that up and continue to watch that. Turner is Smith’s guide who tells him this piece of equipment or that piece of equipment broke, and as you know, when you get into some of the big trucks, it’s very expensive.

Continuing, Smith said Depot Park gazebo, that’s zero. Last year, we spent $6,000 and we had budgeted $6,000. We don’t plan on doing anything additional there. Office furniture, here’s an example of what Wisniewski was asking about. We had $2,000 budgeted for office furniture to replace this table (pointing to council table). As they know, Smith would like to get some kind of a semi-circle table that fits the room better but also allows the councilmembers to see each other as they are talking and communicating. So, we had $2,000, we didn’t use it, we used some of it for chairs that Pardee was referring to in his public comments. But we didn’t spend anything on the table, we still would like to do that, so we’re rolling over the remaining budget and adding to it here.

With regard to the parking kiosk, Smith apologized that there was no comment on the right side, so you’re saying what is that for? So, this is a contingency, if you will. We’ve talked for some time now about the concept of adding paid parking to the Depot lot. So, what we have in the Washington and Main lot, we would duplicate in the Depot lot. But, because it’s a larger lot with two major entrances and exits, we think we would have to have two kiosks in that lot. So, this will all have to come to council and get all vetted and approved. Smith doesn’t know and is not saying that this is a done deal. You have to approve this, but Smith wanted to include it in the budget. Those $18,000 wouldn’t come out of, in all reality, would not come out of our operational funds, those would come from the parking fund. The parking fund pays for this kind of stuff in addition to paying for roads, sidewalks, and parking lot maintenance. If there was ever a need for an additional kiosk, that would come from the parking fund. So, it’s kind of self-funded in that regard, but it’s important to show it on the list here. So, Smith thinks that the key message here is that it’s something we would like to do because it’s a long-term revenue source for the city. We’d like to consider it, investigate it, and if it gets approved, we need to have money for it to buy the kiosks and get them wired in and all that kind of stuff.

Smith mentioned the security camera. There’s another example where we didn’t spend it this year. We just didn’t get to it. It was in our budget, and if we don’t spend it by June 30^th, it will just fall into the fund balance, increasing the fund balance, but we would like to pull it back out again and put in $7,500, because we’ve noticed the cost of these cameras have gone up.

Smith said last, but not least, is an expensive storm drain repair that is needed in the East Alley. We’ve talked many times about this and postponed it, but Smith has noticed that it’s getting worse. We thought we could buy ourselves some time and postpone this, but it’s continually getting worse. The crumbling of the storm drain structures as they call them are crumbling and the bricks are literally falling in, so we have to get that addressed. That would entail some private property owners, such as Essence, Society, and so on. They would have to subscribe into this too, because some of this is on their property. We could do just our portion, but that would be kind of silly and wasteful. We’d like to do it all at once and engage with them. So, if this budget is approved, Smith will immediately start discussions with those property owners to see if we can get that done this summer.

Haven said it’s on their property, they own that alley in increments. Smith said they own that alley. We don’t own that East Alley. We own the West Alley behind Rudy’s, but we don’t own the East Alley. That’s owned by the property owners. Haven said that they would be required to do that, that’s the way it would work. Smith said yes. Casey asked if the property owners own the chunk behind the exact building. Smith said yes, the exact width of their building. When you drive down that alley, you are really driving over private property, that’s not a city roadway.

Continuing, Smith said so that total of appropriations adds up to about $165,000. So, how are we going to fund that? Let’s jump back up to revenue. We’re pulling in $109,000 from the general fund. $96,000 of that came from our ARPA and another $13,900 came from the fund balance. And then we’re also pulling another $55,000 from our parking account. The Washington and Main parking lot, on an annual basis, brings in net about $80,000-$90,000 per year. Net. This year hasn’t been a full year yet since we restarted it, so we are about $55,000. It started out very slow, because COVID was still in place and the number of people coming into town and paying for parking was very low. It’s picking up now. It still really hasn’t returned to pre-COVID levels where we were bringing in about $1,200 per week in parking revenue. Right now, we’re just under $1,000. Smith said he watches it every week. So, it’s getting there, but it’s still not, to this day, it’s not to pre-COVID levels. And then, who knows what inflation is going to do. It might slow things back down again. Right now, we’re very comfortable projecting $55,000 coming out of the parking fund. So, those two add up to the same $164,913 that you see as the total of appropriations. That’s not just coincidence. As we work through the budget numbers, we make sure that those two balance.

So, all in for all accounts, last year, we were $980,000 and this year we will be $1.158 [$1,158,000]. That’s an 18.1% increase, and that’s a healthy increase. A lot of that is in this capital improvement that we just talked about. You can see it was $55,000 this current fiscal year we’re in, and we’re bumping that to $165,000. So, that’s quite an increase. That’s largely where all the increases in the budget are being spent.

Smith asked if there were any questions on capital improvement. That’s kind of important. Pardee asked which line the backyard fence was in? Smith said it’s not in there. We’re not doing the fence at this time. We’re just going to do the slab. That’s going to happen this fiscal year. We’re not going to do the fence until we feel more comfortable. Pardee asked if it was going to be the next budget year, and Smith agreed.

Fuller said he didn’t realize that someone had torn up the community bathroom. Are we being reimbursed from somebody for that, or is that just something that we have to pay for? When they ripped the sink off (unintelligible). Smith said that what Charlie [Sergeant Young] was referring to when asked is we could have gone after them, but a first-time offense, Smith didn’t know that we would have gained in any financial reimbursement out of that, so we chose not to go after them. The second offense, they never did find the culprits. We suspect they were out of town. We passed around the pictures. Our cameras caught them, and nobody recognized them. So, we suspect they were from out of town somewhere. But no, we repaired that ourselves. The sink, as it turned out, our plumber was able to put it back on. He had to do some modifications, but he was able to reuse the sink. The bowl itself was not cracked or anything. So, it was a lot of cleanup effort and we had to repair some of the brackets on the walls that they ripped right out of the walls, but in the end, it was mostly labor and not so much in parts. If we had contracted it out, the repair bill probably would have been $3, $4, $5,000. The Sheriff looks at $10,000 as kind of a threshold. If it’s over $10,000, Smith didn’t know if that qualifies as major, some delineation, Smith didn’t know. They said if it’s under $10,000, it just becomes less of a winning case, if you will. So, our actual out-of-pocket expense because we did most of the work ourselves was probably less than $1,000.

Wisniewski asked about the charging stations that we discussed. Is that (unintelligible) anything? Smith said he will be bringing the charging stations back at the next meeting. He’s working with Ryan on the legal agreement. Smith is hoping to bring that back to the next council meeting for approval, but that is a neutral cost. There won’t be any cost to the city for this. They are doing this just as a way of getting their name out there and they make some money on the fees charged. So, that’s not in the budget because it would be free to the city. Haven said he’d thought about that in retrospect a little bit. It sounds good, it doesn’t cost us anything, but Haven wondered if there is a profit potential with other suppliers for these kinds of things, if we could make something on that. Haven didn’t know. Smith said he has talked with two other companies. Both of them want us to pay the upfront cost of the equipment, and it was cost prohibitive. It was $14, $15,000 in equipment, plus the slab, plus the electrical work, whereas this company is doing all of that. That was just for Washington and Main; Smith didn’t even talk to them about Depot. Haven said (unintelligible) a return on investment. (unintelligible). We wouldn’t get a lot. Smith said we won’t get rich off it. Haven said so a wash is probably the best. Smith said that the thought is that we are providing a community service and encouraging renewable, sustainable energy. Smith thinks there are benefits for that, even if we don’t make a ton of money on it. We would make $100 a month, so it would be minimal income. Pardee asked if somebody is charging in those slots after 4:00 – do we get parking for them? Smith said that’s an option. Do we charge double for both parking and – Pardee said we could charge for a space, and the charging that occurs merely to pay back the guy that put the equipment in. If we don’t get paid for the parking space, then we’re giving up that revenue. (Haven said something unintelligible.) Smith said that we could talk about that. Two totally separate apps. He’s going to have a QR code right on the machine. They just go up and put their phone in front of it and pay for the charging. Then they’d walk past the kiosk and pay again. But then they’re still saving a lot as opposed to going to the gas pump and paying $4.50 for a gallon.

Smith asked if there were any other questions on capital improvement.

No questions.

Continuing, Smith said let’s go to our sources and uses. This is a summary of what Smith just talked about. So, the sources, what are the key significant sources this year. ARPA funds, obviously, $96,000. That was from the American Rescue Plan. A great shot in the arm. When Pardee asked last year, you only spent $55,000 in capital improvement. This year, we going to spend $164,000, and the big reason for that change is these ARPA funds. Parking revenue is coming back. So, that’s $55,000. That’s great news. Tax revenue increases. So, this is that year over year increase because of taxable value going up and assessed value. So, that’s $21,000 of new income, and then we had to pull in $20,000 from the fund balance. So, those are the big sources. Now where are we going to use those? These are just the most significant ones. $86,000 for those seven driveways/sidewalks. $19,500 for the East Alley storm drain. $18,000 for kiosks for this Depot Road lot if that’s approved by council. $11,500 for parking lot sealcoating and restriping. More security cameras for the park [$7,500] and then crosswalk painting [$4,000]. So that’s kind of a summary of the sources and uses.

Haven asked if they balanced, if they equal each other. Smith said no, no they don’t. Those are just the key ones. The budget balances. Haven said right, he gets that part. (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Smith said those are balanced right to the penny, but these don’t necessarily balance out.

Wisniewski asked if there was any discussion about going out to the bond market for replacement of bond monies that are going to be repaid in the next two years. The clock’s ticking on that. Smith said yes, we have. The finance committee’s work typically is done right after tonight’s meeting, and that’s kind of their end cycle until the next year, next February when the budget process starts up again. This year, the finance committee is going to keep meeting to address the possibility of a bond, a general obligation bond, or whatever other sources of revenue do we want to consider. Pardee has brought up, and the finance committee is respectfully addressing his comment, the possibility of offsetting a general obligation bond that is about to retire, expire, and then we’ll replace it with a new one potentially. That will have to go on the ballot in November, and to go on the ballot in November, it has to be submitted to the state in August. There are some deadlines coming up, so if we decide we want to go that path, we’ve got to kind of get on the stick and get moving here. That’s why he says the finance committee is going to have to dig into that.

Pardee said to just to clarify, his preference is increased millage, not general bond obligations. Smith said Pardee was right. It was millage or general bond obligations; it could be one or the other.

Ryan said we can’t be submitting something in August to the state. We’ve got to have that done sixty days before August. We’ve got to have that done by the end of June. Smith said wow. Ryan said if we are going to be on November of 2022. Smith agreed. Ryan said it’s got to go to the governor and the attorney general to get approved. He knows the one millage fell off because the one bond was paid off for the drain or sewer, but we have another one coming up, a bigger one as he understands it next year, or is that in 2024? Coté said 2024. Smith asked if it was 2024. Coté said 2023 will be the last payment. Smith said that we are going to have to engage Rana [Emmons, PSLZ, the city’s auditor] to help us with this decision-making, what’s the right way to go, if anything. We’re going to have to get started on that if we are going to have to have something by the end of June. That’s even earlier than Smith thought. Smith thanked Ryan.

Smith asked Coté to go to the next slide and said Wisniewski asked about the fund balances. This is our checking account balance if you will. Let’s start at the very top. July 1, 2021. That was almost a year ago. This is an audited number from our financial auditor of $201,274. That becomes the starting point for all the calculations that will follow. Projected revenue, we’re not there yet, because the current fiscal year is not done yet. It’s done on June 30^th but looking at what we’ve received already and what we are going to receive between now and June 30^th, we think it’s $828,919. So, we add that to the fund balance. We do the same with expenditures. What have we spent so far and what we have yet to spend. We think that’s $720,195. Realistically, some of those capital improvements like the cameras for the park, $6,800, that’s not going to happen, so that’s an unrealized expenditure. So, (unintelligible), that means net revenues and expenditure is $180,000 [$180,724] positive, so $180,000 plus the $208,000 [$201,274] that we started with, we think we’re going to end the current fiscal year with $309,000 [$309,998], almost $310,000 in our fund balance. In other words, that represents 43%. You always divide that by your expenditures, so $309,000 divided into the $720,000 equates to a 43% fund balance. By charter, we cannot go below a 16.6% fund balance percentage. That’s effectively two months. Two divided by twelve is 16.6. We should always have at least two months of revenue, meaning our checking account balance. Let’s say all of a sudden, our revenue turned off like that, we would have at least two months of available funds that are in our checking account balance. So that’s why it has to be at least 16.6%. We’re currently at 43%. Wisniewski asked what’s a benchmark. Ryan said 20%. Smith and Coté agreed.

Continuing, Smith said that $309,998, let’s go to the next slide, and you’ll see that becomes the starting point for our new one. Now we are into the 2022-2023 fund balance. This is our new fiscal year. It would start July 1. There’s the $309,000 [$309,998] we think we’re going to end the current fiscal year at. Let’s add in the revenue and expenditures. These numbers came right off those slides we looked at earlier in the packet, and then we’re going to come up short $116,000. That number should be something that you recognize because we talked about that earlier in the presentation. $116,000. That was $96,000 from ARPA and $20,000 from the fund balance. So, all these numbers start to make sense now as you see them. So, $116,000 we come up short. So, $309,998 minus the $116,000 shortfall, that means we are expecting the new fund balance as of June 30, 2023, over a year from now, to be $193,998, and that equates to 22.1% fund balance, which is a good, comfortable spot to be in, rather than we hate to be at 16.6%. That’s just cutting it a little too tight. So, this is something that Wisniewski asked about, and Smith and Coté watch all the time. Coté has a new report that he can print off at the snap of a finger, and it gives us a real good view of our fund balance that we can utilize in that new report. Wisniewski said if that ever dropped down from 43% to 22%, you’d look at it a year later, you could be below 16%. Smith said you could. You have to watch, you have to look at your revenue and expenditures, and you either have to bump your revenue up or cut your expenditures down, one of the two, to bring it back in line.

Pardee said less revenue (unintelligible). We usually underspend capital project expense. Smith said that’s usually what happens. Historically, we like to plan for the best, and we have all good intentions to get there, but sometimes it’s just too much from a manpower standpoint to get it all done, and so if anything, we usually underspend our budget in the capital improvement area because we just don’t have enough manpower to get it all done.

Ryan said when you really look at it, take away the ARPA funds, you’re going $20,000 into the fund balance. The $96,000 is a gift from Uncle Sam, it’s a one-year bonus, you’re cutting into the fund balance by $20,000, which is less than 10% of what the fund balance is. Coté agreed. Ryan said that’s $200,000. He’s just saying thankfully we got that $96,000. Coté agreed. Ryan said it’s a $20,000 haircut. Coté and Smith agreed. Avery said that’s also included in the revenue side of things. Smith agreed. Haven said it’s an in and out. Avery said so if we spend at the same rate next year as we did this year, we’re in a whole lot of trouble. Wisniewski agreed, because the $96,000 is not going to be there. Coté agreed. Smith said it’s a one-time gift from Uncle Sam, and the thought was he is kind of helping you get back on your feet after COVID, which we lost, coincidentally, we lost about $100,000 in our parking fund, so it worked out to be very close to getting us whole again. So, it is a shot in the arm, but it’s kind of what we need to get back to our previous spending levels.

Pardee said that the aprons are a big surprise, and that’s really why we aren’t doing any city streets or city sidewalks. Instead of doing city streets and sidewalks, we are doing the apron portion. Smith agreed, and he consulted with HRC [Hubbell, Roth & Clark] about it. That’s our city engineering firm, and Smith asked, in their opinion, what is the bigger risk. There are sidewalks, yes, the tree root has lifted up a 1” gap from one flag to the next, and that’s a trip hazard, no question. But in terms of quantities, HRC agreed, our priority really should be fixing those pavers, either replacing on a paver-by-paver basis or just replacing it altogether, that really should be our priority. So, that was on sidewalks. We’ve got the PASER [Pavement Surface Evaluation and Rating] report coming still on roads, and Pardee didn’t ask about that today. The PASER study is the condition of our roads, and it was done about three or four weeks ago, so Smith expects it any day from HRC. That will give us the condition of each of our roads. That will say East Church Street is a four, Washington is a five, they’ll give us all these ratings, and that can be a great prioritization tool for us as we decide what roads we’ll want to do, and we’ll use that information mainly for our capital improvement, for the capital projects fund going forward, but right now, these driveways have to be our biggest priority. Pardee said he didn’t disagree.

Smith said he wanted to go on and finish up. He is going to go fairly quickly through the salaries. He’s not in any way trying to diminish the discussion on this. He’s happy to discuss whatever council wants to, but he did walk them through this at our last meeting. One change that was made today as a matter of fact, and this is one of the changes to today’s packet, is a resident pointed out that administrative assistant, that’s Evelyn Bihl, her salary was entered in there as a salary when in fact she is hourly. So, Smith agreed with this person’s complaint and made this adjustment. So, Bihl’s salary is now based on an hourly rate, not on an annual salary. It didn’t really change the numbers significantly at all, it didn’t change them at all, but Smith just wanted to clarify the percentages.

Smith said that he’s already said that what he’s done here is used the MML [Michigan Municipal League] annual salary study. They didn’t do one in 2022, but they did do one in 2021. He knows it’s a little old, but we used that as the basis. There have been discussions on how do you prioritize this list, and Smith has numbers if you want to go through them, but the MML study comes from those municipalities that voluntarily participated in the study. It’s not a mandatory thing that every city and township in the state has to participate in. It’s a voluntary basis. So, Smith takes the voluntary list of people that did respond, and he prioritized that to find other municipalities that are similar to us. There are different ways you can do that. Smith has chosen taxable value as the basis of comparison. He takes other municipalities that have a similar taxable value to ours. You could do it on population, you could do it on budget, on their expense budget. All three ways, he has the numbers. He’s been told we should be doing this strictly on population, and there’s a city in the upper peninsula with almost the exact same number of residents as ours, 888 he thinks. Almost identical in population, but their budget, their annual budget, is $18,000. They have very little compared to us. They’re really not a good comparison. So, the population is the same, but the level of work is not, and even their city manager is paid more than Smith. So, even then, you just can’t utilize it. So, Smith looked at all three methods today, and in every case, it suggests that we’re behind, we’re the lowest. And Smith is not complaining, please don’t take that as a complaint, if employee retention is a priority, then we need to have some benchmark that we go after. Smith said he’s put forward the MML survey. He doesn’t know of anything else that is strictly municipal. He can look at Crain’s Weekly and find some business comparisons, but that’s of no value; it’s got to be a municipality. So, MML is the source, and Smith just doesn’t know where else to turn. These numbers, these comparisons, are all based on the MML study. Wisniewski asked if benefits ever get looked at compared to others. Smith said we only offer benefits to one employee, and that’s our DPW Director [supervisor] because he’s technically full-time. So, he does receive benefits, but we benefit, no pun intended, from the fact that he’s a single man, he has no family, so his benefits are really very minimal. It’s only about $5,000 a year. So, it’s not in these numbers.

Smith said let’s go to the next slide because this kind of summarizes our proposal. So, based on our previous slide, it shows that we were behind the MML benchmark. We’re proposing a 3% increase. The DPW supervisor is a little bit more than that, some of them are just at the 3%, for an overall total of 3.4% increase. And Smith would like to point out that it’s really focusing on employee retention. Because the cost of hiring right now is crazy. So, Smith thinks that it’s better to invest in our current staff that’s already trained, we already have money invested in, let’s keep them, let’s retain them, and try to keep them happy. So, there’s this proposal, and Smith didn’t go into it in detail, we talked at our last meeting about a 2%, up to 2%, 401K match. Smith didn’t talk about it, but that is in the budget under the administrative budget. So, that’s in there. It equates to $3,700 a year in the line item in the budget. Both the 401K [a discussion followed regarding the proper tax code identifier and the consensus that it should be referred to as a 457], both the 457 program and the 3.4% overall increase that’s shown here, both of those are designed for retention. So that is the focus. As you recall, our income is going up 3.5%, so 3.4% on wages is staying within that. It’s not gobbling up more of the operational budget, it’s just taking advantage of the fact that our revenue is going up, so that was the thought behind that the salaries. He went through this a couple of weeks ago, but Smith asked if there were any questions.

Fuller thinks this is really great, but how is an upper peninsula municipality with an $18,000 budget paying a city manager more than $40,000? Smith said not to quote him on that $18,000. He’s got the number in one of these files, but it’s got to be more than $18,000. Fuller said it doesn’t sound right. (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Smith said it has to be $180,000. We’re at $800[,000] and next year we’ll be at $1.1 [$1,100,000] but yeah, he thinks it’s $180,000. But he’s a manager, clerk, and treasurer all in one. They’re in a rural community, they’re spread out, they don’t have roads or sidewalks, their roads are dirt, their sidewalks are nonexistent, they don’t have a high-end community like we do, they just don’t have the expenses like we do.

Smith asked Coté to go to the next slide. He said he wasn’t going to go through all these in detail. Sue Wylie walked you through this a couple of weeks ago. These are the capital improvement plans, so this is the five-year out plan, taking you all through the details. If monies exist, these are the things we’d like to do over the next five years. It’s an important part of the budgeting process to be looking outward, and there’s two pages of this.

Smith said that’s the end of the presentation, so at this point, Smith would address any questions they may have on the budget or anything at all. As you know, this is a public hearing, the idea is that the public can come in and ask questions, learn more about this, of course council as well. We are not voting on this tonight. The approval will come on the second meeting in June. So, the second meeting in May we present, the public hearing, the second meeting in June, we present it for approval. So, we have a month to think about it. If you have any questions between now and then, by all means, we try not to change the budgets, any of the budget numbers, between now and June because we’ve now presented these as our official proposal. We’d rather not change it unless there’s a mistake somewhere, but Coté and Smith and the finance committee have been over these numbers, so we really hope that that won’t happen, but over the next month, that’s your chance to ask any questions.

Haven said according to our agenda, we have a presentation that Smith just finished, and then we have another line item which is Public Comments for Public Hearing. Haven asked Ryan if that is probably within the timeframe of public hearing itself (Ryan nodded affirmatively) or outside of it.

Item 12c – Public Comments for Public Hearing (Video time mark 1:50:31):

Haven said he would ask any members of the public if they would like to make a comment. Mr. Pardee did throughout.

Pardee said thank you. He’d invite everybody to look at the second page of the capital improvement plan, and really next year, next year, next year. And the point that Ryan made was the $164,000 that is proposed for the next year’s budget, the $96,000 from ARPA is part of that, but then the higher numbers go from $180,000 to $236,000, and they’re dreams. Projects is what Luginski calls them. It’s not a plan until you’ve got it financed, so it’s really a project. Haven said it’s an observation – what is your suggestion? Pardee said his suggestion is that we need to find a way to increase our funds, and Pardee thinks that the kiosk is a good point, but that only gets us partway there. Pardee would go after a ballot millage, where our maximum millage is 15 mills, the numbers Smith showed us was 11.1, so we have almost 4 mills there that you could move the millage up. [Note: the number is 11.8330, unless Pardee is proposing to eliminate the continuing library credit that the council promised to the taxpayers.]

Fuller (unintelligible) you both have financial backgrounds, you mentioned bonds, you mentioned millages, what’s the advantage of one over the other. Wisniewski suggested bonds. Wisniewski said it’s just like at home, you get a raise, or you borrow money to pay for your home improvement. Fuller asked if Wisniewski would recommend the millage over the bond, or the bond over the millage. Wisniewski said he doesn’t know the details, but he would suggest if you have significant dollars that you’re going to have to spend in the next three-four years, he would go with bond financing. Pardee said he’s on another page. He prefers a meatier approach. He thinks we are about $200,000 shy in terms of expenses that need to be made each year on roads and sidewalks and millage could cover that. There aren’t any big ones coming, except $70,000 for a new truck coming a year from now. Pardee thinks we pushed that back a bit. Smith agreed. Pardee said he’s the Friends of Streets and Sidewalks guy, and that’s where he thinks we’re falling short in our community.

Haven said that’s what the finance committee is going to be kicking around. You all come, you’re all welcome. Pardee said thank you (unintelligible).

Wisniewski asked Smith if water and sewer is part of any budget here that gets presented. Smith said that the fund balance, the sewer fund and the water fund, no, those are separate, they are not part of our operational budget. It’s true we did borrow from the sewer fund for financing this building construction and we’re paying it back, we’re paying ourselves back, that’s what that $3,000 was for debt service. But no, they’re not presented here because we don’t, it’s not a source of revenue. Pardee said our sewer bills are paying back too.

Ryan said they’re proprietary funds, they’re not governmental funds, they’re supposed to not make any money, it’s like a business fund, enterprise fund. Coté said it isn’t an enterprise, it’s in and out. Ryan said that the council should look at the water and sewer rates and decide if they’re going to raise them or whatever they’re going to do, you know, prior to July 1^st. Independence Township handles that for us, and they make recommendations. The Great Lakes Water Authority, which we’re part of, they set the water and sewer rates, and then we’ve got to mark up a little bit. Independence marks up, we’re part of their system, but that’s an enterprise fund, it’s not a governmental fund, if you will. Wisniewski asked if that got presented in the audited financials? Ryan said oh yes. Coté said absolutely. Smith said your water and sewer fund balances are recorded there as well, yes.

Smith said that Ryan was touching on a good point, because we’re looking forward to a subsequent council meeting, the sewer fund balance, the water fund balance, because sewer rates are going up. We know they’re going up. The township just had it in their meeting last Tuesday. They presented, the Great Lakes Water Authority presented, a proposal for their increase, and it’s significant. It’s 7 or 8%. So, we need to look back in totality as to how we’re going to address sewer billing. We’ve been talking for a while, we’ve kicked it around, about the possibility of the township doing our sewer billing for us. It saves us some administrative costs. But their costs are actually lower than ours because we are paying a double mark up. We’re paying the Great Lakes Water Authority and we’re also paying the township. So, Smith thinks that they are going to put forward a proposal where if we were to enroll in and become part of the township’s sewer billing. You get one bill, water and sewer all combined, and it would be administrated by the township. Their costs are lower than ours, so Smith thinks even with the 7-8% increase, it would be lower than what we are paying today. So, instead of an increase, it would be a slight decrease. So, there’s some good news. That’s kind of a one-time benefit that we can take advantage of. We are exploring that right now. That will come forward in a future meeting.

Pardee said but the increase per quarter, if we use their 7%, is like $9.00 a quarter on $140-something. Pardee said he’s paying $140 a quarter for sewer. Smith said that Pardee is paying $117.42. Luginski and Smith said it went up because the Oakland-Macomb Interceptor went up, but that is falling – (interrupting Smith), Luginski said that is only for three or four – (interrupting Luginski), Coté said four quarters. Smith said four payments, but that’s – (interrupting Smith), Pardee said 7% of $117.00. Casey asked if that was final yet, and Smith said yes. Smith said it’s back to $117. 42, but it’s probably got to go up to $125.00, maybe as high as $130.00. If we fall under the township, they’re paying $108.00 right now. With the increase, they’ll probably be about $116.00, $117.00. So, it would be the same or less than what we’re paying. So, we’re exploring all those. Haven and Smith are meeting with the township and talking about this among other things. We’ll keep you posted on that.

Smith asked if there is anything else, any questions.

No additional questions.

Haven said OK.

Smith thanked them for their time and apologized that it went so long.

Item 12d – Adjourn: Public Hearing (Video time mark 1:58:07):

Haven said that they would close the public hearing at 8:58.

Agenda Item #13, Adjourn (Video time mark 1:58:14):

Haven said that seeing that there is nothing else on the agenda, he will entertain a motion to adjourn.

Motion by adjourn by Avery; second Luginski.

No discussion.

Motion to adjourn by unanimous voice vote.

Resources:

• • Link to video recording: https://reflect-independence-tv-mi.cablecast.tv/vod/3773-City-5-23-22-v1/vod.mp4
  • 05-23-2022 City Council packet