May 12, 2025 City Council Meeting

Introduction:

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

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

Sue Wylie said it’s 7:00, I’m going to call the meeting to order.

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

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

(Pledge said.)

Wylie said thank you.

Agenda Item #3, Roll Call (Video time mark 0:00:24):

Wylie said Item #3 on our agenda is a roll call, and Jonathan [Smith, city manager], would you please take the roll call. Smith said sure.

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

Wylie said OK, we’re all here, thank you.

Agenda Item #4, Approval of Agenda – Motion (Video time mark 0:00:43):

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

Motion by Jones; second Avery.

Wylie said any discussion from council.

No discussion.

Wylie said questions or comments from the public.

Carol Eberhardt said I do have a public comment. Wylie said for the agenda. This is on the agenda? Eberhardt said no. Wylie said OK, sorry.

Motion to approve the agenda passed by unanimous voice vote.

Wylie said the agenda is approved.

Agenda Item #5, Public Comments (Video time mark 0:01:23):

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

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

Wylie said Item #5 is public comments. And Carol Eberhardt would like to make a public comment.

Wylie recognized Eberhardt for a comment.

Wylie said you know, just before you, I just want to read this one section before you get started. I apologize. You probably know it, but (Wylie read the rules for public comment).

Eberhardt said OK. I’m Carol Eberhardt. I’m here on behalf of Clarkston Arts and Main Street Clarkston. We have been hot in the middle of planning Buskfest again this year. Because of the popularity of last year, we estimated we had about 300 people come to the first Buskfest. For those of you who don’t know about it, the concept is basically, it was very common to have troubadours on the street doing local entertainment. And we’ve been wanting to bring that to Clarkston for a while. So, we tried last year. It was extremely successful. So, because of the success, we’ve decided to do it the first Tuesday of June, July, and August. The dates are the 10^th [of June], the 8th of July, and 12th of August. We specifically chose a Tuesday night because it’s a slow night for the restaurants. And the whole point of the event is to bring some business into town for them. We’re encouraging them to have a bar on the street, since it will be inside the social district and also encouraging them to have some sort of walking food. Something that people can buy and walk around with. We do not, we will not bring outside vendors in. At some point we have people who said, oh, can I come in with my food truck, whatever. We will not compete with local businesses. That was the decision that we made. So, each night we have nine musicians who come to play. Only three play at once. They’re strategically placed throughout the city so they don’t interfere with each other and they basically rotate through. Their paid for tips. That’s it. The event is completely free. So, my job tonight is to invite the council. I hope we have support from you. I hope to see you downtown.

Wylie said anybody have any questions? Quisenberry said times. Eberhardt said starts at 6:00, goes to 9:00.

Jones said I’m sorry, is it Buckfest or Buskfest? Eberhardt said Buskfest. Jones said okay.

(To Eberhardt), Casey said what are the dates again? Eberhardt said the dates are June 10th, July 8th, and August 12th. Casey said thank you. Eberhardt said if we have rain, we’re going to have one rain date the next week. But we’re not having rain.

Wylie said can you tell us, do you know the intersections. I assume – can you tell us which intersections are going to be at? Eberhardt said they’re going to be in front of the grill, or the brunch house – Wylie said OK – (continuing), Eberhardt said on the steps of the old post office – Wylie said OK – (continuing), Eberhardt said on the steps of the old dentist’s office, in front of Clarkson Conservatory, and down by Health Quest. Wylie said OK, so even though only three each time, they’re still not necessarily back-to-back at the same location. Eberhardt said no, no – Wylie said OK – (continuing), Eberhardt said because we don’t want the music to interfere with each other. Wylie said right, OK.

Wylie said anybody else have questions.

Ebehardt said great.

Smith asked Eberhardt have you got a flyer for it, because we’ll advertise it, promote it on the website. Eberhardt said yeah, I’ll bring you a flyer.

Wylie said great. Smith said thanks.

Wylie said hang on, there’s one more question. (To Eberhardt), hang on, we’ve got one more question for you.

Quisenberry said as much as I like the idea, I’m just thinking about something procedurally. You’re telling us about this now. Is this something that the council needs or should approve of? Eberhardt said I don’t believe so, no. Quisenberry said and why is that. Eberhardt said because there’s no ordinance that says you can’t play music on the street. Quisenberry said there’s a law that says you can’t have liquor on the street. Eberhardt said yeah, I’m sorry about that. (Avery made an unintelligible comment.) Quisenberry said huh. Avery said the social district allows people to do that. Casey said the social district allows that. Quisenberry said on any given date, for any reason, they can just open it up. Eberhardt said sure. Jones said so they can set the outside bars. Wylie said that’s one thing I would question, the outside bars. I mean, social districts should be careful.

Eberhardt said I was here last year and basically was told not to. And if you recall, I mean, we had some folks. We had Jack, who used to play his guitar in front of Rudy’s all the time, kind of spontaneously, but no. Wylie said I’m just questioning, can they serve drinks outside. I don’t recall the social district. Eberhardt said the restaurants, like Honcho has a bar outside. Wylie said on their property, though. Eberhardt said on their property, yeah. They’re not going to have liquor or a bar off their property. Wylie said OK, OK. Eberhardt said we just wanted the opportunity for them to be able to get served without going into the restaurant if that’s what the restaurant chooses to do.

Wylie said OK, got a question in the audience.

Erich Lines said just a comment. Yes, if the restaurant has an additional bar permit, they can put it anywhere on their property. Wylie said OK. Lines said so, you’ll have the permit for the bar itself, and then you get an additional bar permit and that gives you the ability to put it in your property. Wylie said OK and thanked Lines.

Wylie said anybody else.

Smith said one other comment. So, Rudy’s does not yet have a Michigan liquor control permit for our social district. We’re working on that, working with them, trying to get all the approvals in the system, but they’re not there just yet. Eberhardt said that’s good to know because I have not talked to them yet. Because this venue really isn’t, you know, like Honcho in particular, down at the Union where folks are in, out on the street already. But Rudy’s is kind of a different ball game at this point just because of the type of venue it is. So, I haven’t spoken to him yet, but thanks for the info. Because, you know, they might get extra business that night and want to put staff on or something. Wylie said OK. Jones said cool. Eberhardt said thanks.

Wylie thanked Eberhardt.  Anybody else have public comments tonight?

Wylie recognized Chet Pardee for a comment. Pardee provided his address.

Pardee said good evening. The last council meeting, the city manager and I, the city manager took issue with my conclusion that five homes on North Main were not conforming to city code. The green house at the corner of Clarkston Road may not be abandoned.

Wylie said excuse me. [Addressing audience members:] Do you guys mind holding off a little bit? Thank you.

Wylie told Pardee to go ahead. Go ahead. I just want to make sure everybody heard you.

Pardee said the green house is not abandoned but certainly not conforming to code. I walk by this home four times a day. By the time I get home tonight, it will have been eight times, and continue to look for signs of repair. The next four houses to the north also do not conform to Clarkston, Clarkston city standards. The city manager’s comment that there were no issues with these homes, puzzled me, as kind as I can be, either you were not familiar with these properties, not willing to acknowledge the truth, or not familiar with the city code. The green house being repainted red for several years has only the south side painted red. The west side, street side, has not been completely painted and has a crumbled front porch. The north side has not been painted, and the east side has not been painted. The yellow house, Miller House, formerly Edison Cottage, has yard art not conforming to most Clarkston moral standards. The gray duplex, next door, moving north, requires exterior painting. House number five, the cranberry house side entrance has peeling porch paint and porch roof damage. The garage has been repainted on only two sides, and the vehicle storage building needs siding, repair, and painting. A passenger car and vehicle trailer beside the storage building has not been moved for several years.

Wylie thanked Pardee. Anybody have questions or comments for Pardee?

Jones said well, I just have a question just because you note on here the yellow house has yard art not conforming to most Clarkston moral standards. I would argue that moral standards aren’t the purview here of the city council, that more of like the city code issues and that sort of, those are more of the things that are in our wheelhouse. So, have you considered speaking with them if it’s something that is upsetting you and maybe having a conversation about it to see if you can resolve it that way? Pardee said I’ve had one conversation with them, and then went immediately to the sheriff’s and asked to make a police report. Jones said all right then.

Wylie said anybody else, questions or comments.

No comments.

Wylie said thank you.

Agenda Item #6 – FYI: (Video time mark 0:11:14):

Wylie said moving on from public comments, we’re on Item #6, FYI, I don’t think, yeah, we don’t have anything for FYI.

Agenda Item #7 – City Manager’s Report (Video time mark 0:11:25):

• • May 12, 2025, City Manager Report (page 3/21 of the council packet)

Wylie said Item #7 is city manager’s report, which is included in the package.

(To Smith), Wylie said do you have anything to add?

Smith said no, I don’t think so.

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

No comments.

Agenda Item #8 – Oakland County Sheriff’s Report (Video time mark 0:11:41):

• • Oakland County Sheriff Department Cumulative Monthly Report for April 2025 (page 4/21 of the council packet)

Wylie said Item #8 is Oakland County Sheriff’s report, and Sergeant Ashley is here.

Wylie said would you like to say anything or anybody have questions on the sheriff’s report.

Jones I just like to say that after the last time you were here at the meeting, we had talked about putting an empty patrol car or something like that parked. And I will say that two weeks ago, I was driving home on Main Street to my house. It was about 10:30, almost 11 o’clock, and there was a sheriff’s county patrol car. He was actually in it. He was parked. And so, I wanted to thank you for that and just say that I would love to see more of that. I was speaking with some of my neighbors this weekend, and they were saying that because of the traffic from – so with the warmer weather and the patios being open, we know that we’re going to start seeing that increase. So, we would love to see that continued, especially in the evenings and on the weekends, because it would be a great opportunity for tickets, which are revenue drivers. Sergeant Ashley said and we have talked to the guys, and they will come down, you know, whenever they can. They still have to cover the whole town. Jones said yeah, but I just wanted to say that I saw it, and I appreciate it. Sergeant Ashley said but, yeah, they get a chance, have a cop down there, and especially hit the roads that are – I’m sure we’re going to be talking about that later on.

Avery said yeah, I was going to say if they could give a little love to the corner of Holcomb and Washington. It gets pretty heated down there. People aren’t driving. Sergeant Ashley said there is something, yeah. Avery said they’re trying to turn off Church Street. Sergeant Ashley said we’re aware of a lot of the problems. Smith told me he saw somebody going the wrong way. So, off Depot. So, all this stuff is being taken down, put in the book, and we are going to try to get together with everybody and do a sit-down. So that’s going to be the next thing. So that’s a wrap with that.

Avery and Wylie said thank you.

Agenda Item #9 – Consent Agenda (Video time mark 0:13:22):

• • 04-14-2025 Regular City Council Meeting, Final Minutes (page 5/21 of the council packet)
  • 04-28-2025 Regular City Council Meeting, Draft Minutes (page 7/21 of the council packet)
  • 05-12-2025 Treasurer’s Report (page 9/21 of the council packet)
  • 05-05-2025 – Check Disbursement Report for the Period 04-01-2025 – 04-30-2025 (page 10/21 of the council packet)
  • Thomas J. Ryan, P.C, April invoice (page 14/21 of the council packet)

Wylie said Item #8. I’m sorry. Item #9 is Consent agenda. This includes the final minutes of the April 14, 2025, regular meeting, draft minutes of the April 28, 2025, regular meeting, and Treasurer’s Report from May 12th. And I’ll need a motion and then a second to approve the Consent agenda.

Motion by Quisenberry; second Jones.

Wylie said discussion or comments from council.

No comments.

Wylie said discussion or comments from the public.

Wylie recognized Pardee for a comment.

Pardee said on April 28, my comments on the 28th relate to the City of Clarkston and related to a specific section of Clarkston that I call “fight the blight on North Main.” Wylie said, where it says, Chet Pardee addressed council regarding blight in the city. Is that what you’re saying? Pardee said blight in the city, but a specific area of the city that I’ve been dealing with. Wylie said so, you want to say at the northeast corner. Pardee said huh. Wylie said you want us to say the northeast corner. Pardee said sure. Wylie said would we be able to make that correction. What is this? This is draft minutes. Smith said yep. Wylie said OK. And northeast. OK. So, in consent agenda, there’s the final minutes is the first one. The second one is the draft minutes for April 28th. And it’s Item #5. Five, the second bullet.

Wylie said anything else on consent agenda.

No comments.

Wylie said so, we had a first and a second to approve the consent agenda as presented. It needs to be amended with this correction. (To Quisenberry), Wylie said so, will you make a motion we accept that amendment. Quisenberry said of course. Wylie said OK. And Jones? Jones said yes. Wylie said OK.

Wylie said any other comments.

Motion to approve the consent agenda passed by unanimous voice vote.

Wylie said the consent agenda is approved.

Agenda Item #10, Unfinished Business (Video time mark 0:15:33):

Wylie said Item #10 is unfinished business.

Item #10A – Discussion: Traffic Congestion in the City Due to I-75 Construction Detours (Video time mark 0:15:35):

Wylie said discussion traffic congestion in the city due to I-75 construction detours. (To Smith), Wylie said I assume you’re going to talk about this. Smith said right. So, I think John [Sergeant Ashley] and I will both weigh in on this. Wylie said OK.

Smith said as you know, the problem is due to the MDOT [Michigan Department of Transportation] redirection of traffic through the city. They’re using Main Street as a primary means to get to South 75 or elsewhere. But we find that a lot of the traffic that we’re experiencing is coming in from, say, the Davisburg area. They’re coming across Davisburg Road, down Holcomb, and then they want to cut across Bluegrass, Miller, or Washington to get over to M-15 and then to go north on M-15 to get to the freeway. The right direction is supposed to be those people coming in from the Davisburg area should stay on Dixie Highway all the way down to M-15 and then go north on M-15 to get to the freeway. But instead, a lot of people are taking this back way that everybody knows about to get into downtown Clarkston. It’s only been exacerbated further, all the traffic, when the township recently pushed MDOT to, I’m not sure who pushed who, but my understanding is that there was pressure put on them to close Bluegrass. That’s only made the situation worse. It didn’t take any traffic away. It just put more traffic with Bluegrass closed onto the other two roads, which is Miller and Washington. So those two roads are experiencing a lot of traffic. I think I’ve talked to virtually every resident on Miller Road calling to complain about the traffic. And with just cause. There’s a ton of traffic on Bluegrass, I’m sorry, on Miller. And even truck traffic, semis, flatbed haulers, car haulers. These truckers are taking the back route as well, not just people. Truckers are doing this and it’s really alarming. They’re exceeding the road capacity. That’s a 5,000-pound capacity, I believe it is, on that road. (To Sergeant Ashley), Smith said if you know differently, chime in here, but that was my understanding. And there’s a sign there that says that. And the truckers are going right past it to get over to Main Street and then get onto 75 South. So, it’s, the closing of Bluegrass, my point is, is really exacerbated, the traffic congestion in downtown Clarkston.

Smith said so, I’ve been in discussions with both MDOT and the [Oakland County] Road Commission. Not making a lot of progress with MDOT, to be honest. The road commission is studying the option we talked about in one of our previous council meetings about putting a four-way stop at – Sergeant Ashley said West Washington and Holcomb. Smith said Washington and Holcomb. That would at least allow the people on Washington an opportunity to get across or around the corner, wherever. Right now, there’s so much traffic at that intersection and everybody’s in a hurry, don’t you know? And so, they don’t want to let anybody in. So, it’s really, it’s dicey at times. I see people, they just gun it and go for it. And that’s kind of a crazy mentality they have. When everybody’s in a hurry. So, it’s just going to likely result in an accident. So, I’m strongly urging, the best I can, to MDOT to turn it into a four-way stop. Yes, it’ll slow things down a little bit on Holcomb, but at least it makes it a fair chance for people to get across the roadway. So, we’re in discussions with the traffic engineer, with the road commission, and trying to get that into place. He’s made the point to me several times, well, history doesn’t warrant the, turning that into a four-way stop. I said, well, history has nothing to do with this, because this is new history that’s just been put upon us as a result of MDOT’s decision to close many of the exits at I-75. That’s what’s causing this. It’s not history. It’s not what happened five years ago. It’s a new problem.

Jones said who is that saying this. I apologize. Smith said it’s the road commission engineer, road engineer. Jones said all right.

Smith said so, I have a meeting with him on Thursday, an in-person meeting. And, well, I’m not sure if it’s in-person or Teams. But I will be meeting with him on Thursday, and his supervisor will be there as well. So, I hope to have a good discussion with him on the rationale for not turning that into a four-way stop.

Avery said I’m curious if they’ve been out to that intersection. Jones agreed. Avery said maybe we could observe it. Maybe have the meeting on site, and they can see about 4:00 or so. Smith said he said he was there today at 10:30. And I said, well, that’s not the time. Rodgers said after rush hour. Smith said you need to be there at 7:30, 8:00 in the morning. Avery said yeah. Smith said and that’s when you’ll see the crazy going on. So that is Thursday.

Smith said in the meantime, I have not, I have not made any progress with MDOT. They feel strongly that this is the way that it has to be, and we’re just going to have to get through this. We’ll have to weather the storm. I understand there’s no good way to do this, but I think there are some mitigation steps that could be made, and we’re trying to work with them.

(To Sergeant Ashley), Smith said I know you’ve talked with them as well. Sergeant Ashley said so, we’re trying to organize a meeting with all of us, including Smith, where we all sit down in one room. That’s going to be a big thing there. And we can talk and be like, I’ve witnessed it coming to these meetings. You know what I mean. I know what it’s like. I know what it’s like in the morning. I know people’s frustration. Another thing I want to do is I want to find out a timeline. When are they going to open up some of these, like (gesturing). So how this is, how this works, from what I’m understanding, is when they’re doing these big projects, they have, like, let’s say the company that tears it all up. They don’t just move on, you know, they don’t wait until one’s done. They move on. They do it all at once. Then the next group comes in, and they do their part until it all gets done. Unfortunately, this is the first southbound entrance from Rambling to here. So, everybody is coming down here. The trucks, our weighmaster, is having a heyday. He’s all excited because any truck that enters the city and goes down the road, he’s right there. So, Jason’s doing a great job – Jones agreed – (continuing), Sergeant Ashley said and he’s getting as many as he can. We’ve had people come to our sub. We totally understand. So, we’re working toward this. I want to find out what, give us a timeline. If you’re going to say you’ve got to weather it, at least give us some kind of a timeline we can look forward to, not just, you know, you’ve got to deal with it.

An unidentified man said it’s ‘til November. Some of the guys come into this place. Sergeant Ashley said is that what they’re saying. The unidentified man said it’s ‘til November. Sergeant Ashley said OK. Well, then, it’s going to be – I mean, I hate to say – I mean, that’s a long ways, OK? Wylie said it’s still six months. (Unintelligible discussion between Rodgers and Wylie.) Sergeant Ashley said but until then, we’re going to just keep moving forward as much as we can. But just shoving it, closing everything and shoving it all over the place doesn’t help the traffic either.

Jones said yeah. Well, and also, we have to be cognizant of the fact that, what, two weeks? Pine Knob is going to open. Sergeant Ashley said oh, yeah. I’m in charge of that, so I can deal with that. Jones said and, like, we might get a little sneak preview next Friday when they have that food truck event out there, so, I just, my thing is that we all know what the problem is. We know what is causing the problem, and we have presented nothing but ideas to try and mitigate it. And at this point, like, from where, just from the meetings that I’ve been in, the road commission has failed us and MDOT has failed us. And we have literally tried, like, asking for every single thing. And the fact that MDOT has basically told you that until we have a fatality accident, there’s nothing they can do about it, completely unacceptable from a community safety, like, public safety standpoint. And I hate the fact that now, like, the only thing I can say here is, well, we should just call, we all need to call MDOT and do, like, a letter-writing campaign and, like, start putting pressure on these people. But, I mean, like, I don’t know what else there is that we can do to help you from this point. But I just know that it’s a huge issue, and it’s going to get worse. And you’ve got your constraints where, you know, you can only have so many people out. There’s only so much we can do, given that we’ve got three, you know, masters that we serve when it comes to the roads. So, I just want to know what we can do from a city council perspective to actually, like, put some fire under them and get something to happen.

Smith said well, we’ve talked to them on, like, do we just do the same thing that they did on Bluegrass? Do we close Miller? We were told when we investigated that a month ago that that was illegal to close a public roadway. That was built with public funds. It was intended to be used by the public. It’s not a private subdivision. It’s a public roadway. We were told it was illegal to close that roadway. So, we didn’t do that. But then they closed Bluegrass. So apparently there are – I don’t know who exactly. I believe it was MDOT that closed Bluegrass.

(To Smith), Rodgers said isn’t there, like, some roads that you could close? Like they say, you can’t make a right turn between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. because basically they don’t want rush hour traffic going through a neighborhood. I see them everywhere. Smith said yeah. Rodgers said is that something we could do on Miller that between 6:00 a.m. Jones said we talked about that a long time ago. Rodgers said I mean, I leave my house sometimes at a quarter to 5:00, and there is, I have to wait to get out on Main Street through the week. It’s ridiculous. Smith said we could put some traffic control – Rodgers said could you do that. Smith said so that is something, to Jones’s point, that’s a traffic control order. Council could implement that if we wish to do that. The question, though, would – if I put that at the corner of Holcomb and Miller, telling people they can’t turn left on Miller to get over to M-15, then I just – at least the rule followers, not everybody’s a rule follower, but at least the people that do follow the rule are now just going to come down to Washington. Rodgers said but couldn’t it force them to take the route that they’re supposed to take, which of course nobody wants to take, down Dixie and then down Main Street? I mean, that is, you just said that’s what they want them to do. Well, the only way to force them that way is to – Avery said Avery said you have to close Holcomb – (continuing), Rodgers said make those situations.

Wylie said Robert’s (no last name provided) got something.

Robert said why don’t you just make Miller one way and Washington one way. Miller going west is one way, so no one can go east – or I’m sorry, go west. They can only go west. They can’t go east. And then you just kind of go to Washington to point left at the light to just kind of reroute the whole route. Avery said I mean, I appreciate it. Robert said I mean, the problem is – (interrupting Robert) Avery said I’m on Holcomb, and we’ve got traffic all day long, just like you do. So, I don’t understand why we’re going to help some people. Robert said we have a traffic light, though. The traffic light is what, on Holcomb and Washington – Avery said yeah – (continuing), Robert said that’s where everyone’s trying to get to. That traffic light, when that light turns green, all that traffic from M-15 all the way to Holcomb, it’s just like a giant dam opening up. Everyone goes, and then it stops. So, (unintelligible) you’re going to have probably 30%, 40% less traffic. Avery said on Holcomb. Robert said because everyone is trying to get into that left. It’s always backed up from M-15 all the way to Holcomb because everyone’s making a left-hand turn. Avery said yeah, but I will say, like, in the morning, when I walk my dog at 7:30 in the morning, it’s already backed up on Holcomb. But then I walk down here to Clark Bridge, and traffic is just rolling on through Main Street. Everybody’s coming – I don’t know why, but everybody’s coming down Holcomb. To me, that doesn’t make any sense if I’m driving that way, because you’ve got to make, you’ve got to wait, and then you’ve got to make the right, and then you’ve got to make the left. Why don’t we just go down to, but there’s nothing you can do to, you can’t make people short of shutting the road. (Chet Pardee raised his hand; unintelligible cross talk on council.) (To Pardee), Wylie said hang on. Avery said you know, honestly, when they closed Bluegrass, they’ve lost all credibility on traffic control. Wylie and Jones agreed. Avery said because someone important enough on Bluegrass raised enough hell and got them to do it. And now we’re stuck. I don’t know who that person is.

Jones said I don’t think it’s there anymore. When I drove by today, I think someone took it upon themselves to remove those barriers. Avery said I did see the signs were pulled back on the weekend, so I don’t know what that means. Wylie said Quisenberry wants to say something. Avery said but I don’t know if there were any tickets.

(To Smith), Casey said is Bluegrass a private road? Smith said no, public road. Casey said so, how does it get closed? Smith said I don’t know. Casey said if it’s a public road. Pardee said I’ve seen the no-through-traffic sign. Avery said yeah, only local traffic. Smith said that’s not what we’re talking about. Pardee said not really closed. Smith said I understand. Avery said but they’re writing tickets for people that are driving through there, I’ve been told.

Smith said just tonight, we understand that the traffic coming in from M-15, heading west on Bluegrass – (unintelligible side conversations on council) – (continuing), that sign has been moved off the roadway. It’s in the grass now. The one for eastbound Bluegrass coming out of Holcomb, that sign is still there. But it’s like they’re, I don’t know if that was officially done, or just some – Avery said well, it’s hardly, I mean, that’s, I mean, it doesn’t help, because all it did was, the folks that want to cut to go back and, you know, Springfield Township, that makes it so they don’t have to come down to Miller. So that helps draw around us a little bit. But it doesn’t really, the main traffic is going the other way, so it hasn’t – Wylie said Quisenberry’s been waiting. He’s got something he wants to say or ask. Avery said Quisenberry knows.

Quisenberry said there is an option, but it does alleviate some of the traffic on Washington Road going east from Holcomb to M-15. But it presents some possible other problems that you just have to weigh whether you want to do it or not. And that’s to get rid of the no right turn on red at [M-]15 and East Washington. And what that would do, that would allow more cars on East Washington to be able to make a turn onto southbound M-15 per cycle. Each cycle, there would be, I don’t know how many more cars, but, I don’t want to say considerably, but more cars would be able to get through that intersection if they didn’t, if the traffic was clear on [M-]15 and they were on Washington, but they were stuck there because of that sign. So, if that sign were to be temporarily removed while this is all going on, it would alleviate some of that traffic, that traffic backup on eastbound Washington at [M-]15.

Smith said eastbound to enter onto northbound. Quisenberry said no, because the sign says, no right turn on red. So, it would only affect the people on Washington, waiting for their light to change, going south on [M-]15. Smith said and you could argue the other way, too. Now, pedestrian safety we’re talking about here, but the other way, too, I noticed the people turning left off of West Washington onto northbound Main, sometimes they have to wait for three or four or five cars coming off of East Washington to get out of that first right before they can turn left. If all those cars were gone already, so they somehow merged in and were gone, then it would get that many more cars through off of West Washington onto northbound Main. So, you could argue both sides of Washington if you took the signs off. It’s a valid question. It’s a pedestrian safety issue. That’s why the no right turn on red is there, but you would take that risk.

Wylie said Eberhardt has a comment.

Eberhardt said just one question. If the weighmaster writes a ticket in town, do we get the – Sergeant Ashley said I don’t know who gets the money for that stuff. I would think it is going to be who writes it, it’s gonna be the City of Clarkston. Eberhhardt said well, I would think that we should get the money. Smith said 75%. Yup. Eberhardt said OK. And only a comment, in all the years that I was here, which was many, MDOT and Oakland County absolutely does not cooperate. And it takes, I don’t know, maybe somebody higher up. Do we go to our county commissioner? Do we go to our state senator? Do we need somebody who’s got more clout than we do? But I’ve sat in many a meeting, and the answer is always we can’t do that. It’s against safety regulations.

Wylie said Forte, and by the way, if you guys have a comment or something, please raise your hand. Some people are doing that, and then they’re waiting patiently. Wylie told Forte to go ahead.

Forte said do we have the signs. Stop signs. Smith said oh, yeah, sure. Forte said can we just install them? Yeah. Forte said what’s the repercussion. Do we have to wait a month, like, for meetings and stuff? Smith said well, it’s alienating our relationship with the road commission. Forte said what do they do anymore. Rodgers said it doesn’t seem like much. Wylie said we do get money from them sometimes. Smith said that’s already degraded, but it’s not. We still do have a relationship with the road commission. I try to maintain that. They worked with us in the past. I hate to just throw the signs up without their engineer’s approval. I have offered that I’ll put the signs up. His bigger concern seems to be about taking the signs down at the end of it. Very definitely a temporary change. He says when you take the signs down, it actually is harder to manage the change after you’ve taken the signs down. People have a false sense of security thinking, oh, Holcomb’s going to stop, and they don’t. Avery said that’s true. Smith said we’d have to probably put up some temporary signs then that says, Holcomb does not stop. Cross street does not stop. We actually have that sign.

Wylie said hang on. Jones has a comment.

Jones said well, I was just going to say, when you were saying about the stop signs, what my understanding was we were proposing this as a temporary solution, not a permanent solution. And if we’ve got the whole Holcomb doesn’t stop, we have literally offered a solution to them, and so I think that we’ve really pushed for that. I mean, it’s temporary. We’re offering to do it ourselves. It could help. We have already got a plan in place to match their fear about the security and the safety going away then. So, I mean. Smith said that’s Thursday’s meeting, and I hope to appeal to the engineer’s supervisor that will be on the call, so I hope to have some success in that meeting on Thursday. That’s the road commission, and that’s a whole different story, but I think with the road commission, we have a fair shot at getting that four-way stop.

Jones said would it help if we went and took some video footage, you know, from like 4:00 to 5:00 and provided it to him so he could see this, what it looks like when it’s not 10:30 in the morning. Smith said he said he would visit between now and Thursday, he’d visit during rush hour, and what I see is people coming off of West Washington just taking a chance, like somebody’s going to stop for them. They just go for it because they’ve been sitting there for ten minutes. So, it’s a very dangerous situation.

(To Avery), Wylie said you had a question or comment again? Avery said no.

Wylie said no. (To Pardee), Wylie said you had something. Pardee said yes.

Pardee said I think the intersection at Miller Road West and Holcomb with the four stop signs is a good demonstration of how people take turns, right? And it is manageable. As long as people know what the rule is, they’ll go clockwise. And the only problem is it ends up on Robert’s Street. That’s the problem. But the traffic keeps going the other direction. So, I really believe a four-way stop at West Washington and Holcomb could be beneficial in that it gives everybody a chance. Smith said yup.

Wylie said anybody else, questions or comments.

No comments.

(To Smith), Wylie said do you have what you need. Smith said I think I do. We weren’t asking for any decisions tonight. Wylie said I know. Smith said I was just giving you a status update on what we know. I’ll give you an update after my meeting with the road commission on Thursday. (To Sergeant Ashley), Smith said I’ll work with you so you can get this meeting with MDOT set up. And I think, you know, to Eberhardt’s point, we may have to elicit support from Elissa Slotkin or somebody like that to get the ear of MDOT, because right now it’s not working.

Wylie said all right. OK, OK.

Wylie recognized Cara Catallo for a comment.

Catallo said well, I was just going to suggest, I wish that there could be a town hall meeting where the community could come and share their discouragement with powers that be. I’m guessing that they would not be up for that, but I wish that that could happen. Wylie said they being who? Oh, you mean MDOT and the road commission. OK, OK.

Wylie recognized Robert for a comment.

Robert said I was just going to say, even with the closure of Bluegrass, obviously there’s more traffic on my street, especially late at night when you can hear the trucks or motorcycles, and they try to go down Bluegrass, and (unintelliglbe) around here. So, then they actually get upset. They’re like, oh, I can’t go down this road, so they just gun it, and they just go down Miller road 100 miles an hour. I’ve got plenty of Ring camera if anybody wants to see it. I know the cops do a pretty good job of it. It’s just, at nighttime, it’s a drag. They don’t even stop. It’s a drag strip on Holcomb all the way to Miller. It’s only a matter of time before someone gets hit.

Wylie said it sounds like it would help if we got those signs taken off of Bluegrass that maybe Independence Township, whoever did that, got those signs taken down. Smith said well, I believe it’s MDOT did actually install them. Wylie said so they did that. Smith said so that would be part of our discussion (unintelligible). As far as the, to Catallo’s point, about getting MDOT to come to a town hall meeting. As you know, I’ve been in the past, I’ve tried to get MDOT to come talk to us about pedestrian safety downtown, and their assistance for Depot and Main, our crosswalk there, that there have been no fatalities, so there’s no reason to come to your meeting. There’s nothing to tell you, so no, we won’t even come to your meeting. Rather upsetting response from MDOT to say we won’t even come to your meeting.

Quisenberry said I kind of like Forte’s idea. Is this a temporary sign? Because if we leave it to OCRC [Oakland County Road Commission] and MDOT, we’re going to end up with a roundabout. Jones said no, we’re not going to end up with anything. Forte said let’s just do it. I mean, what’s the worst that happens? Like, really? Jones said I’ve been advocating for this sort of thing for a few months. Avery said that’s not our intersection, so we’re putting stuff in other people’s jurisdiction. That’s a problem. Quisenberry said Holcomb and Washington. Avery said yeah, that’s a problem. Smith said just north of Washington, the road commission’s jurisdiction stops, but the intersection itself is technically a MDOT, I’m sorry, a road commission jurisdiction. Wylie said OK

Avery said yeah, you have to think long-term here. Listen, I live on Holcomb. It sucks. I mean, we’ve got traffic all day long. But it’s going to be done in November. The roads will be done. I’m disappointed with the fact that I know on other projects that the road commission, not the road commission, but MDOT, will have community meetings that they’re really going to do something that really disrupts traffic so they get people’s input. They didn’t do that here. Because last year they closed some stuff, and then we didn’t have this. So, I guess they thought, oh, we’re good to go. We can do it again this year. And unfortunately, the entrance ramps, as they closed, has created an excessive amount of traffic. And so, and there’s nowhere else for those people to get on unless they go down to Sashabaw, and that’s not going to make it any better either. So, I feel like we’re stuck.

Wylie recognized Robert for a comment.

Robert said when there’s a parade or a road closure, like last Saturday, the Angel’s Race. Is there a permit to be filled to close the road down, or do they just call you up and say, hey, we want to close it? What’s the process? Smith said there’s a permitting process. Robert said and then you send it to the road commission. Smith said no, to MDOT. Robert said MDOT? Smith said yeah, for Main Street. In that case, it was. Oh, yeah, there’s a permitting process. And then they notify Sergeant Ashley. Robert said OK. Sergeant Ashley said he called me, too. He wanted to know exactly how long it was going to be closed. Avery said yeah. Seargeant Ashley said and it was 40 minutes. Robert said I mean, I get it. It’s one thing if it’s for a couple months, but I’m not just saying this for words. It’s a solid twelve hours a day in front of my house, where on Holcomb, it comes and goes. Avery said we get it all day long. Robert said but it’s twelve hours every single day. It’s like, well, okay.

Wylie said there’s no question it’s very bad for everybody who’s living on those streets. There’s no question. Maybe we should start putting pressure on some politicians, get the newspapers involved, you know, call up the channel. I don’t even know if people read newspapers anymore, except for me. Jones said yes, they do. Local news is still the primary news source for most residents of communities. Wylie said and maybe, I don’t know if MDOT listens to stuff like that, but I’m calling my reporter I know at Oakland Press tomorrow. I’ve got to take his name first. OK. Smith said the local news. I already said that.

Wylie recognized Cara Catallo for a comment.

Catallo said I’d like to mention, too, the idea of putting a – there must be a big orange sign that talks about the weight of trucks to try to get them to go all the way to M-15 at least, because it is shocking how many semis you see going down Holcomb right now. Wylie said yeah. OK.

Wylie said all right. All right. Let’s move on. Thank you very much. We had lots of interesting discussions. I know it’s not very pleasant.

Agenda Item #11, New Business (Video time mark 0:42:50):

Wylie said Item #11 is new business.

Item #11A – Discussion: Introduction of Karen Joliat, Clarkston’s Representative on the Oakland County Board of Commissioners (Video time mark 0:42:52:)

Wylie said and under Item #11A, we have discussion, introduction of Karen Joliat, Clarkson’s representative on the Oakland County Board of Commissioners. And Joliat is here, very graciously. You can stay where you are if you would like to come to the podium. Joliat said I can come to the podium in case anybody wants to ask. Wylie said Joliat did provide a directory, so council people, that’s where it came from. And the office also has some.

Joliat said well, thank you for inviting me. This was a very informative meeting. So, to clarify, the road commission does not fall under the county purview. They answer to the state. But with that being said, we do have contact with many of the engineers. And if I can find out who you’re working with, I can certainly call and try to express the extreme frustration. I live at Dixie and Sashabaw. So, I do a lot down here because this is my district with Independence and everything. And I’ve endured, I mean, just the frustration of waiting in traffic, not expecting it because I’m not down here that much. So, I empathize with all of you that have to go through that on a daily basis.

Joliat said but other than that, (to Smith), I’ll get with you. Smtih said sounds good

Joliat said do you guys have questions for me.

Quisenberry said primarily, one of our concerns that we wanted to talk to you about has to do with the increase in the assessing that each community is getting. And I’ve been following it in the paper as well, and I understand there’s a meeting with a lot of the south end communities later, either this week or beginning of next week, regarding other options.

Joliat said, so, that’s become somewhat of a political issue. So, you guys were all first hit with the sheriff contracts. And I don’t want to get political here, but it was a political divide, trying to fight for. And they’re, the administration, current administration, is, really thinks it’s important to pass on indirect costs. That’s how they’re framing it, that haven’t been done for many years. So that’s why there was the huge increase with the sheriff contracts. We felt that it was very unfair and that the timing of it, that they seemed to have followed a city calendar. So, they thought, well, these municipalities can put up a millage. And we’re, you know, most of us represent townships, and they follow the year calendar. And you’re like, you hit them when they just planned their budget. How are they going to come up with a million-dollar extra to fund it? So, then they created this easing plan where you could pay less up front, but then you’d have to catch up in the end.

Joliat said so that happened, and then now the assessing came out. And we thought we were going to win it. We, it was actually we got two votes from the other side, and then one of them caved. But to your point, the mayors and the supervisors are getting, I guess you could say, smart to the fact that do we really want to be under the thumb of somebody that can switch, you know, switch the game plan like this. So, I think to the executive and county’s surprise that, yeah, people are going, municipalities are going other places to look for other options.

Quisenberry said this is going to sound a little silly, but why are they so concerned with indirect costs? If they were paid, if those indirect costs that they’re now factoring in were still paid by us, but through a different way. So, any of the costs that they’re now trying to assimilate into the assessing fee charge that we get, those additions that they’re now trying to put directly on us were still paid by us into, through our county taxes and then used to, we’ll call it, help subsidize the assessing. So why, and from what I understand of the county’s budget, they’re certainly not operating at a deficit. Joliat said no. Quisenberry said no. So what prompts them now to sit there and say, we want to collect more from you when we don’t really need to? Joliat said all the answer that we got was that we fought, because that was our, that was, you said exactly what we were saying, and that, you know, we were, we’re all a partner as a county and we’re all supposed to, you know, be benefiting from, you know, financially in services and that the continuity that it brought the county to have the assessing under one umbrella. Joliat said this is the executive’s directive that, there was a study done by Munis (?), it’s, you can (unintelligible), that they are using to base all those indirect costs on. It was done, the exact same accounting was done for the sheriff’s contracts using Munis’ study as a basis, and then it was done with assessing. So basically, any contracts now that we, that the county has with the municipalities is kind of going through this review.

Quisenberry said but the question that I don’t understand is why. It’s not, if the county had a need for money and they said we can’t, we’re operating in the red, then okay, we can talk about that, but that’s not the case. Joliat said the only, the only answer we got is not all communities in Oakland County uses the sheriff’s office or uses the assessing department, and it’s not fair that they are subsidizing the rest of the county. We never heard anything in my district and my other constituents, or my other fellow commissioners that anybody complained about. I mean, that’s just the way that it’s, so that’s the only answer that we have received.

Wylie said does the county, does the sheriff’s department back up police, (looking at Quisenberry), maybe you would know, do they back up police departments that don’t use the sheriff’s department? Joliat said yes. Quisenberry said all the time. Wylie said OK, so that – Joliat said it’s community sharing. I used to be a trustee in Waterford, and we would vote on it, and we vote on it at the county too. It’s community sharing. They do the same thing with funding.

Quisenberry said and the sheriff’s department has all their auxiliary units that are available to the communities, even the communities that have their own police department, the SWAT teams, the arson teams, every special unit the sheriff’s department has, you, agencies that don’t contract with the sheriff’s department still have access to those auxiliary additional services. Joliat said you’re absolutely right. Quisenberry said and I guess what I’m thinking is, what’s going to stop them from now on and say, no, you’re not going to get these now? Joliat said well, we’ve brought that up, and they have not said it’s, it’s community sharing, and that’s just, I know, but that’s – Quisenberry said assessing is community sharing. Joliat said I know, I did not vote for it. Quisenberry said I appreciate it. Joliat said I was voiceless against it, yeah.

Jones said yeah, and again, this is not directed at you, but – Joliat said it’s fine. Jones said well, my issue that I see here is they’re asking us for an increase for these indirect funds and to cover all that, but we, in return, won’t really see anything, like, beneficial of it. Like, we’re, if I’m reading that contract correctly about the sheriff’s, we’re not even guaranteed, like, a dedicated patrol, which I understand that’s more complicated, but, like, you’re asking us for more money. Where is it going to go? How will it be used? How is this going to benefit the community?

Joliat said well, they view it, when I say they, the executive administration views it as that we, that the county, has been subsidizing all of these communities for years. So, there’s no, so you’re, don’t expect more service for an increased cost. Jones, said well, could we get the baseline service? Yeah, like just to guarantee a baseline service? Quisenberry said subsidizing with our tax money. Jones said yeah, that’s how public funds work. It’s not as if this subsidizing additional money is coming out of Dave Woodward’s pocket. It’s, everything is coming from the pool of county dollars and stuff.

Joliat said our next commission meeting is a week from Thursday. Wylie said where do you guys have your meetings. Joliat said at the county judges, the law – Wylie said the courthouse. Joliat thanked Wylie. (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Joliat said there’s a board of commissioners auditorium that’s right adjacent to the courthouse. Wylie said and what time do you meet? Joliat said 6:00. Wylie said 6:00 p.m. next Thursday, which is, the 9th? No. Jones said no, is it the 23rd? The 22nd? Wylie said the 12th. OK. Joliat said oh. Quisenberry said the 23rd is the 22nd. Rodgers said 22nd. Wylie said  it the 22nd? 22nd. OK, 6:00 p.m. 1200 North Telegraph at the courthouse in the county commissioner’s auditorium. Joliat said that’s right.

Wylie said OK. Do most, and by the way, those who are wondering, when I asked Joliat to come, I said, to introduce yourself, I said to talk about these two increases in services for police services and for assessing, and also if anybody had any questions on waterways or lakes, because I believe you have some expertise because you are on the Mill Pond board. Joliat said I am on the Mill Pond. I’m on a number of different boards. And I’m an Optimist, and I guess when you came and spoke, you’re having a beaver problem. Smith  said yes, right. Joliat said so, I did do some research on that. I don’t know if you’ve looked into it, but you don’t need a permit anymore to have them removed. Smith said OK. Joliat said I have a contact of a guy that on one of the lakes that I sit on, they (Smith made an unintelligible comment.) Smith said alive removed, or – Joliat said well, they, so, this woman that’s on one of the lake boards I just came from, there’s a gentleman that they use that traps them. Smith said I think it’s the same man. Wylie said might be the same guy. Joliat said they don’t usually survive. Avery said he’s very effective.  He got the culprit. Joliat said OK, good. OK, good. Yes. Smith said we’re using the same person.

Wylie said I think they’re getting a little bolder. My son has seen the beaver in my yard two times in the past week. Smith said oh. Wylie said I’ve never seen one of them. I see the damage, but I don’t see the beavers. Smith said they do seem to be kind of migrating outside the mill race somewhere and over towards the Clinton River where you are on the bank. Wylie said OK. Joliat said and the mill pond, I know that the one engineer at Water Resource had worked on getting a grant from the state to do an engineering study. So, you guys are brought up to date. So that’s what they’re in the process of doing right now to look at options for the dam. Smith said yes. Wylie said OK.

Wylie said anybody else have questions or comments for Joliat.

Casey said what about the Canada geese? Avery said you love those. Joliat said I just got back from, I had a lake board meeting at 3:15, and I had done a lot of research on it because of the bird flu. They were doing a pilot program they, that the DNR [Department of Natural Resources] turned over to the USDA [United States Department of Agriculture] of Michigan to, it’s euthanasia now. They’re no longer relocating them. But there’s a number of metrics that you need to meet to qualify for that. You have to have your beach closure from the previous year, and you have to have at least done an egg and nest destruction, which that deadline was April, April 11th, I believe. And then you have to have 100 geese or more, and they come out, and they actually count. Wylie said oh, they do the count? Joliat said yes. I said, well, that’s not really fair. I mean, on any given day, she’s like, well, it’s a pilot program. And I said, does it depend on, you know, the size of the lake? Because that’s a huge difference. She’s like, no, we’re just in the infancy stages. Wylie said OK. Joliat said so, none of my lake boards have used the program yet. Wylie said OK.  It’s expensive. Joliat said yeah, that’s the other part of it, yeah. Smith said I read just yesterday that they suspended the euthanizing program for this year. Joliat said OK. Smith said and they said we’ll revisit it next year. Joliat said OK, OK.

Quisenberry said did we, were we able to take advantage of the egg destruction, any of that? Smith said we did take advantage of that. We got all of our permits in by the due date, and we did apply for that. The question is, did the agent or whatever his title was, the nest instructor, did he find it? I never heard that. Quisenberry said I know we missed one family. Rodgers said yeah, I saw it newly born. Quisenberry said hmm? Rodgers said I saw it newly born today. Joliat said they should give you a report. Smith said they should. Joliat said OK. Smith said I haven’t seen it yet. Joliat said OK.

Wylie said OK, anybody else.

No comments.

Wylie said anybody in the public.

Wylie recognized Pardee for a comment.

Pardee said so, when will there be an election that we can choose different county executives? Joliat said so, we’re all up for the election in the next presidential election. Pardee said next presidential election. Wylie said how long are your terms. Quisenberry said it’s every two years. It’s every two years. Joliat said no, commissioners just changed this last, this last election to four. So, we’re all on four. Jones said that will be ’28. Joliat said it was two years. Wylie said OK. Jones said 2028. Pardee said 2028. Joliat said yep, yep.

Pardee said so, is it a Coulter thing or a Woodward thing? I’m trying, you said it’s politics, so all I’m trying to figure out is to whom not to be happy. Joliat said the best that we can observe it’s both of their initiatives. It’s Woodward and Coulter. Pardee said is there a county treasurer that’s really low profile? Joliat said yeah, the treasurer, I know, is not happy with it either. Yeah, but he doesn’t get a vote. Pardee said thank you.

Wylie said so, Woodward is head of the county commissioners. Joliat said yes. Wylie said is there a number two person on the board? Joliat said I’m sorry. Wylie said is there a number two person on the board? Joliat said there’s his vice chair. Wylie said and that is? Joliat said Marcia Gershenson. She has West Bloomfield. Wylie said OK. OK, so we can’t vote for either of those two. Because they’re both representatives. OK.

Wylie said anybody else, questions or comments on, anything for Joliat.

No comments.

Wylie thanked Joliat. I appreciate you coming in and answering the questions and helping us out with this. Quisenberry said thank you. Wylie said and your contact information would be in the directory. Joliat said yeah, that’s right. I’ll get one. Wylie said oh, it’s on the front. Oh, you’re right. Thank you.

Item#11B – Discussion: Five Challenge Areas in the 25-26 Fiscal Year Budget Proposal (Video time mark 0:57:44):

• • 05-12-2025 – 2025/2026 Fiscal Year Budget Challenges (page 17/21 of the council packet)

Wylie said Item #11B is discussion of five challenge areas of the ‘25-‘26 fiscal year budget proposal. And we’ve got both Jonathan Smith and Greg Coté. (To Coté ), Wylie said are you part of this today, too? Coté said yeah. Wylie said Greg Coté.

Jonathan Smith:

So, as you know, the finance committee has been meeting for several months working on the new budget. Our next meeting on May 27th, which, remember, is a Tuesday. So, we’re not meeting on Memorial Day. The next meeting will be on Tuesday, May 27th. In that meeting, that will be our budget public hearing. And in that meeting, we will be hearing all the details of the budget. I’m not going through all the details of the budget tonight. We’re just addressing five – Smith recognized Quisenberry for a comment.

Quisenberry said I’m sorry to interrupt you. For some reason, I have down this Wednesday as a budget meeting. Wylie said he’s talking about city council meeting. Quisenberry said oh, okay. I got you. Wylie said is there a finance committee meeting this Wednesday. Avery and Smith said yes. Smith said what time is it. Avery said 1:00, I think. Smith said so, yes, we do have a finance committee meeting, but the budget public hearing, which, again, is not a vote. It’s just a discussion. That will be on May 27th. And then we will vote on the new budget on our first meeting in June. So, just to give you a kind of update on the dates.

(Smith continued with the presentation.)

So, the finance committee has been focusing on five challenge areas in the budget. So, the purpose tonight, again, is not a vote, but just to update you on these five challenging areas. We are looking for, I think, the finance committee members, I’ll speak on their behalf, are looking for a read from the rest of you. Are you on board with the direction we’re headed? So, although we’re not voting on this, if you have objection, we’d like to hear it. So, let’s go through.

Here we go. We’re going to talk about these five challenging areas. The first one is, and I’ll go through these one at a time. And this first slide, by the way, is the initially anticipated numbers. They’ve changed a little bit since then, and I’ll go through those on the next slide. But this is what we initially anticipated.

So, these are the five challenging areas. Oakland County Sheriff Services, number one. Number two, Oakland County Assessing Services. I was just talking about that with Joliat. A city attorney change. The building and inspection services. And then administrative staff salaries. Those are the five challenge areas. And as you can see, just to look at the year-over-year change column, down at the bottom we’re seeing about $105,000 increase. What was the initially anticipated number? $105,000 increase. That had us all kind of panicked. Now since then, I’m not going to spend any more time on this. Let’s go on to the next slide. This is what we revisited or modified since then. So, we brought the numbers down a little bit. You can just jump to the chase there. Instead of $105,000 at the bottom of the year-over-year column, it’s $72,600. But let’s go through them one at a time here.

So, Oakland County Police Services, it was 15%. We’ve been working with Independence Township, and I understand the latest percentage is 13.4% year-over-year increase of about $21,000. That’s a reduction from what we originally anticipated, so that’s good news.

Oakland County Assessing, as we were just talking about, there’s a year-over-year increase plan that there’s a smooth and a non-smooth approach. But either way, by the end of the third year, you’ve reached the same threshold. In year one, we were told that would be $12,906, up from $8,600 where we are today. That’s a $4,300 increase, about 50% increase. Now what we’re looking at right now is working with the township, Independence Township.

Smith said we’ll talk more about this, but we are in close conversation with Independence Township, looking for a way to partner with the township, which has better economies of scale, as you can imagine, than we do here in the city. They have options that we don’t.

Actually, Greg [later identified as Greg Babb] is here from Independence Township Assessing, and I met with Greg and with Chuck Phyle [Independence Township supervisor], and we talked about the possibility of Independence Township being our assessor. There are some pros and cons, but it’s an option. This $4,300 shown on this row assumes we stay with the county for now. We’re trying to figure out how would we do all this between now and July 1. It’s a lot of changeover, and we’re not sure we can pull it off. So, for now, I have not baked in any savings by going to the township. I’m just carrying over the $12,906 that the county notified us would be the new bill. Could we get changed over to the township by July 1? Possible, but there are a lot of things that have to happen. And Coté, my treasurer, is a little sweaty back there right now because he’s concerned about getting the tax bills out on July 1 and having it all accurate, of course. That’s a small detail (unintelligible). So, $4,300 is being left in the total right now. We might be able to thrift that away or some of it away, but for right now, we’re leaving it in.

City attorney. The city attorney search committee, which Avery is on, Jones is on, and Casey is on. So, we have good representation on our city attorney search committee. We’re making good progress. We’ve interviewed two of our three candidates. We’ve got a third one planned for next Monday, I believe it is, and we’ll do that final interview, and then we’ll be ready to come to city council with a recommendation that we hope you will follow. But the good news is right now everybody seems to be in agreement that we’ve been kind of over budgeting for [city attorney] Tom Ryan. We’ve been budgeting $30,000 every year for Ryan. The reality is he hasn’t used much more than $15,000 in the last couple years, because the last couple years there hasn’t been a lawsuit to defend. [Apparently ignoring the lawsuit to get the HDC petition on the ballot the two campaign finance complaints, and the bed and breakfast FOIA lawsuit.] So, we’ve stayed under the wire quite a bit. So, our thought is that the new city attorney, their rates will be higher. No getting around that. Their rates will be higher than Ryan’s, but we think that because Ryan has been under budget for so long, barring a lawsuit, which we would hope the MML [Michigan Municipal League] would help us on if that happened, if that were to happen, but barring a lawsuit we think we can stay at the $30,000 budget. So right now, I’ve zeroed out the increase that was on the previous slide for city attorney.

Building and inspection services, this is another area we’re looking, we’re talking with the township about. Carlisle/Wortman is building, has been our building services contractor for several years now. They do a good job, good people, trained, good people on the ground, but they are looking to make some changes that will put more of their staff on retainers rather than a variable cost. So, the more you use them, the more you pay. That’s the way it’s kind of been, but they want them on retainers. That doesn’t work for us because we’re a very small city. Paying a retainer, whether I have five permits this year or 500 permits this year, paying the same amount just really isn’t probably going to pay off for us. We’re not going to have 500 permits. So unfortunately, it resulted in a pretty sizable increase. If we go with the township, I’ve talked with the, again, Chuck Phyle at the township. I’ve also talked with Dave Moran, their building official. I think we have a good option there of using their services. They’re here. They’re surrounding us. Their building inspectors are going around all the time right through the city. I think it’s a very reasonable thing to do. Their costs are a fixed cost, $30,000, whether I have five permits or 500 permits. It’s the same fixed cost, but that includes inspections as well. So, I show in here this is a decrease of $6,000, which it is, versus the $36,000 that Carlisle/Wortman was seeking. But beyond that, that fixed cost includes all inspections. So that’s where the money really comes in. We’re currently paying $10,000 to $15,000 on inspections every year. That would be above and beyond that $6,000. So, this is, I think, just a no-brainer that we go with the township for building services.

And last but not least, our administrative staff salaries. So, we’ve talked to you about this several times. What was it? Last summer, we came to the council about the need to find a more competitive salary so that we could hire a clerk. We could attract a clerk that was trained on elections. Elections, as you well know, have become so confrontational. You have to have somebody on the ground that’s capable of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. Last August, we did not have a clerk here. The Bureau of Elections in Lansing stepped in, and they were here. They brought somebody in. And by the November election, I was getting close to November, I just broached the Bureau of Elections again and said, would you help us again in November? And they said, Jonathan, no. And their exact words are, you have to stand on your own two damn feet. We helped you in August. We cannot help you again in November. You have to find a way to stand on your own two feet.

And this was a broader discussion. I’ve brought this up a couple times with council, is being a little city, we say, okay, we wanted to be in the little city that we were years ago. But when I start running into other organizations, working with them, and they give me a feedback like that, it tells me that we aren’t just a little city, not in other people’s minds. We have to follow the same rules that everybody else does. And if we screw up, we’re not just talking about a citizen or a candidate running for election suing us because we goofed something up, we’re talking about the state of Michigan suing us because we screwed something up. We just cannot take that chance.

So, I brought this up last summer. I’ll get back to my point. We said we really need to do a salary study and find out what is a fair salary that I can attract and retain good, qualified people. That’s what this is all about, attracting and retaining qualified people. So, we had this man come in, Rahmberg and Stover Associates, a recommendation from the Michigan Municipal League. They used the Michigan Municipal League data, which is very robust. Yes, there are not a lot of other small cities to compare to, but they make adjustments in their data to account for that. So, they did a study, and they came back with salaries and recommendations.

We rolled that in. The previous slide showed that when we rolled all that in. Go back real quick. When we rolled all that in, that was $182,000, up from $131,000, about a $50,000 increase. We brought that down now in a revised view of the data. We brought that down to $168,000, up here about a $14,000 reduction from the initial look at this. In other words, the consultant’s recommendation came off of his number, even came lower. So, we’re at $36,883 for year-over-year increase for administrative staff salaries.

I know the question will come up, why now? Why do we need to spend this increase? It’s such a big increase. How can we afford to do this? Well, as I was just saying about the elections, we can’t afford not to do this. We cannot afford one single mistake, or we’ll be in court. If the State of Michigan is suing us, that would just be devastating, if not embarrassing. We’ve got to find a way to have qualified people here. The city manager has to be qualified to be watching for these things, as well as the clerk. Our treasurer has constant responsibilities to make sure that deadlines are being met, reporting required by the state and the feds is being met on time. We’re not just this sleepy little town anymore. We have to have qualified people. You hear in the business world all the time, our employees are our number one asset. They are the biggest asset that we have, is the employees. And that’s really no different here. We have to have qualified people. They are the assets of this operation. If they’re not good, if we don’t have good people here, it’s all out the window. We have to have good, qualified people. And I’m happy to discuss this further. I feel very, very strongly that we have to do this.

You might say, now’s not the time to do this. We can’t afford to do this. The reality is Coté and I and the finance committee have put together a proposal, a balanced budget proposal, that accommodates all five of these things and then some. These are the five big ones, the five big challenges. But we’ve put together a balanced proposal. So, we’re not asking to take money out of the fund balance or take a loan out of it, put a bond debt or something. We’re not asking to do that. We’re asking for one change, and I’ll go over that next. Because you say, how will we afford this? Well, let’s jump right into this next discussion.

So, the library reduction millage. This is an old story that dates back to 2014. In 2014, the library needed a millage to survive. They put a millage in place. The city council at the time said, we want to show our support for the millage, but we also want to give some relief to the homeowners that are going to have to pay this 1.25 point millage. So as a way of showing their support to the residents, they said, we will give you a 0.691 millage reduction to help kind of bridge the gap. This new millage has been put on you. So, recognize that we’re going to give you a reduction back so that this kind of eases the pain a little bit. So that was in 2014. That’s been in place for over ten years now. In that 10 years, we have given back $339,000 out of the city fund to the residents. It’s a great thing. Residents very much appreciate it, I understand. But over time, as our assessed values go up, right now in 2025, if we were to do that again, that would be almost $44,000 that we would be giving back. We just feel we can’t do this any longer.

I know the original wording said, in the future, in the future, it said, this millage, this reduction will continue. But things change. And I think it’s time that this council would consider a change. We are our backs against the wall. As I look at this, and as I go to meetings, and I talk to other city managers, and I talk in conferences that I go to, and I see some of the things they’re going through versus what we’re going through, I’m sorry to say, I see the day that we cannot afford to be a city anymore. We have to start thinking with more creativeness. We have to start looking at ways that we can increase the revenue side of our balance sheet. We’ve got to be more creative. But I know you say, well, then, all the more reason not to increase salaries, or not to go with the assessing. We have to do those things as well. You just can’t cost cut your way to prosperity. We have to find ways to get these things done. We have to have qualified people here to make it happen.

So, I think we have to seriously consider removing this millage reduction. We’re not voting on this tonight, but if the council has questions about this, because when we vote on this on June 9th, as part of the whole budget approval, not only the budget numbers, but this millage change, which, by the way, will increase the average tax bill by $99.59 per year. Annual tax bill will go up $100. We’re going to vote on the whole thing together on June 10th, or whatever it is. I don’t know what the first Monday in June is. But we’re going to vote on it as a package deal. If at that point you think, no, I don’t like this, I’m going to vote it down. But tax bills have to go out on June 15th. So, the timing is very tight.

My point is that if you’re opposed to this idea of the millage change, I need to get that sense tonight. I need to get that read tonight. So, it gives us time to move in another direction. I don’t know what that direction would be, quite frankly. But if the council is opposed to this idea of removing the millage, and we’ve talked about it in our finance committee meeting several times, and the general consensus was, I think we have to do it. We don’t want to do it, but I think we have to do it. But if the overall lead of the council is different, I think we need to know that tonight. So that’s kind of where we stand on the proposal.

The library millage, that $43.9 thousand savings that we would incur this year if we implemented it with the new tax bill on July 1, that gets us over halfway to the $72,000 increase that we’re talking year over year. The other half would come through property value increases that we’re enjoying right now, quite honestly, all of us. As residents and as a city, property values continue to grow. So that’s good news for all of us.

And then the last point I’m making on this slide is that in no way, shape, or form will this change whether we do it or not. We will not change any one dime. We won’t take one dime out or put one dime into the library’s pocket.

This last slide just shows kind of a slide that’s in the budget presentation every year. It kind of shows how the Headlee Act is pushing taxes down year over year. And that’s the orange bar. And then the gray bar is what we’re assessing, what we’re leveraging to our residents. It’s always been .691 below the orange bar because that was the give-back. The proposal here in 2025 is that the orange bar and the gray bar are the same. The maximum allowable would also be our levy amount, so they’d be the same.

What’s not shown on here, by the way, I think it’s an important point, what’s not shown on this slide is the debt millages that we’ve been paying off over the last three years. We’ve paid off three debt millages. And those are above and beyond me. So, from 2014 all the way up to about 2022, there were debt millages that had to be paid off on top of the taxes. So, a resident, let’s just say their home value hasn’t changed a bit. Which I know doesn’t actually exist, that scenario. But let’s just say for the moment their home value stayed the same for the last fourteen years. Their tax bill has been being reduced not only by the Headlee Act, but also because we’ve been paying off our bond debts. Like paying off a credit card just leaves more money in your pocket. So that decline is actually more significant than what’s shown on this slide if I put the bond debts coming off here as well. So even though that grey bar increases in 2025, it’s still way less than where it’s been in past years.

So, my last point was, I’ve been going to these conferences because I am trying, I recognize, and I said it earlier, I’m seeing light at the end of the tunnel. And I’m not sure if it’s a train or if it’s (unintelligible). But I see light at the end of the tunnel sometimes and I think what I need to be doing is working smarter, working with qualified people. It’s so important. I have, I go to these conferences to learn about everything there is to know that other cities know already. I want to steal their ideas, learn from them. There’s no shame in that. Learn what the other cities are doing and bring it back home here to Clarkston. That’s why I go to these conferences, is to learn about things I can bring back home and I always come home with at least one idea. So, it’s about conferences, it’s about making connections, getting to know other city managers that have been through the pain that I’m going right through, I’m going through right now. It’s about establishing partnerships.

I talked about meeting with Chuck Phyle and the township. They have so much to offer. I think we have to be open to the idea of partnering with the township. They have economies of scale that I’ll never have. And so, they’ve been very open to meeting with us, and I think as we go into the future, we have to do more and more of this. We have to have economies of scale that make things financially viable for us and the only way I can do that is with partnering with another municipality. The township is right here. I could partner with somebody else like Springfield but they’re further away.

And then the last thing that we have to do more of than you’ve been hearing me talking about, this is grants. So, we have to be pursuing grants. That’s what all my city manager cohorts and coworkers are doing. They’re going after grants. And I don’t mean just the local bank that’s giving $1,000 away. I’m talking going to the federal government, the state, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Those are the grants we need to be going after. So, I’m up at the plate swinging. Will I get ahead? I don’t know. But I am trying. I want you to know that’s something that has to be part of our formula going forward. So, we’ve got to stay connected. We’ve got to go after grants. We’ve got to be looking for economies of scale. That’s thinking smarter. That’s what’s going to get us into the next ten years. So, we’re not looking at dissolving because we can’t afford to pay our bills. I don’t want to see that day. And so, we have to be thinking along these lines, having qualified people. I know I’m just kind of repeating myself here, but I just can’t emphasize enough the importance of having our biggest asset is our employees. We can’t short, we can’t go short on that. Wylie thanked Smith.

Wylie said I’m going to open it up to the council members first who have questions or comments, and then after that, anybody in the public who wants to ask a question or comment.

Wylie recognized Casey for a comment.

(To Smith), Casey said so is the bottom line that if we approve the new budget as you’re proposing, as you’re going to propose, the city millage would increase by 0.691 mills? Smith said 0.691, yes. Casey said OK. Smith said yes. That’s part of our proposal for this budget presentation is a 0.691, or we’re removing the 0.691 reduction, which double negative rate is an increase of 0.691.

Rodgers said and that equates to about $100 a year on our taxes. Smith said for the average home. Rodgers said for the average home. An unidentified woman in the audience said what is that average price of a home? Coté said $144 [$144,000] on the taxable value.

(To Coté), Wylie said I’m sorry, what did you say? Coté said $144,000. The unidentified woman said where is that? Smith said that’s half. The unidentified woman said where’s the $200,000? Coté said on the assessed value. Smith said so that’s a $300,000 house. Coté said yeah. The unidentified woman said that’s the average price of the house in the village. Coté said the average taxable, taxable $144[,000]. Yes, 2025. Jones said on a $300,000 house. Wylie said OK, council – Coté said that’s not assessed. The unidentified woman said I know.

Jones said yeah, I was just wondering, you said you’re trying to get a read on this so you can figure out if there’s another option. Smith said yes. Jones said what other, like, avenues would there be that you would look at. Smith said we would have to take a scalpel, quite honestly, to a lot of different things if we don’t reduce the library millage [reduction]. I don’t want to consider a bond or some kind of tax increase. I think tax increase is something none of us want. I, too, am a taxpayer. I’m paying a ton on taxes. I can’t believe how much I’m paying. And so, I don’t, just like you, I don’t want a tax increase. Nobody wants that. That is a last resort. So, we have to look at other things, and we’ll probably be taking a scalpel to some things, and it’ll be a reduction of services, probably.

(To Smith), Rodgers said just because I couldn’t hear what was going on over there, can you explain, like, if we don’t do the reduction, if so, adding on, whatever, on average, $100 in taxes, but on an average household. I didn’t hear what was going on over there. What does that mean? Smith said so, $100 on an average home, taxable value, which is half of your resale value. Rodgers said OK. Avery said your assessed value. Smith said assessed value. That’s the way it works, all right? So, a $300,000 house on the market would have about $144[,000], $150[,000], taxable value. On that house, it’d be $100 increase by removing this library millage reduction.

Smith said so, I know that’s not all of us. I mean, some are higher, some are lower, but on average, and we got this from the county, right, Coté? Coté said yes. Smith said that said, your average taxable value, we got some grandmas in town, right, that have been here a long time, and their homes, thanks to Proposal A, are climbing up just a tiny bit every year. So, we have a lot of older folks that have enjoyed that low tax rate. So, you might say, $144[,000]? Who’s got a taxable value of $144[,000] in this city? There are more than you think. Some are even lower than $144[,000] to make the average $144[,000]. Somebody must have a lot down in the $100[,000] range. So, no, that’s what we got from the county. Rodgers said thank you.

[Note from Clarkston Sunshine: The assessed value of your home is 50% of the market value. Your property taxes are based on the taxable value, which starts at the assessed value when you acquire the property. The law limits how much the taxable value can increase each year to the lesser of 5% or the rate of inflation. That cap applies regardless of how much the actual value (the assessed value) of your home may increase. Because of this cap on taxable value, there may be a significant difference between taxable value (which is what your taxes are based on) and assessed value (which is 50% of market value). If you sell your property, the new owner doesn’t get the benefit of that difference. The taxable value is reset to equal the assessed value and increases are capped in future years until the new owner sells the property  The cap on taxable value is designed to protect you from the government. Without that protection, Smith would gladly accept yearly, increased, unaffordable property tax payments that could force some people out of their homes every year if inflation is high and home values go up significantly and taxes were based on market value rather than taxable value.

The Headlee Amendment is another protection for taxpayers from the government. Our charter limits the amount of tax we can pay to 15 mills, but Headlee forces Clarkston to live with whatever the dollar value of 15 mills was when Clarkston voters approved the 15 mills, though Clarkston gets to add the rate of inflaction every year. So the city can collect only what it collected in the previous year plus the rate of inflation (and plus taxes on new construction, which is minimal in Clarkston because the city is already almost completely built up). If total taxes would increase in a year because home values are going up, Headlee requires that the tax rate be reduced so that the city can collect only what it collected in the previous year plus the rate of inflation and plus taxes on new construction. (That’s why the tax rate on your bills is less than 15 mills now. There have been mandatory reductions in the rate through the years as market values increased more than the rate of inflation.) That’s Smith’s “maximum allowable” orange millage bar.

Smith isn’t being truthful in his presentation – if you want a more thorough explanation of how we’re taxed and what the library millage issue is really about, see the Clarkston Secrets post called “Let’s Talk About Taxes” that can be found here. Smith’s graph is deceptive because it shows only the millage rate the city imposes, not the actual revenue the city receives from its property tax. Even though the millage rate decreases each year, that rate is applied to a higher base—the total taxable value of property in the city, which increases with inflation, new construction, and when an owner sells property. So, although the graph shows the millage rate decreasing each year, the total taxes the city collects increases each year. A more honest graph would show the annual increases in the city’s revenue. One might ask why those increases couldn’t keep up with the increased expenses.]

Quisenberry said I just want to clarify in my mind the verb that you use here, point what, three? Smith said city millage reduction has returned $339,000 to the voters. By that, you mean they paid less, $339,000 less in taxes. Smith said correct. No money has gone back or anything like that. Smith said not in their, no. Quisenberry said in the next line, too, it will be a reduction of 43.9 [$43,900]. That’s going back to the voters via property tax savings. Is that what you mean? Avery said well, I think it’s bad verbiage, not to take over here. It’s not a reduction. Quisenberry said that’s what I – (continuing), Avery said well, it’s a reduction in the city’s – Coté said operating – (continuing), Avery said operating budget. That’s what it should say. We’ve taken in $43,000.9 [$43,900] less per year by not collecting that .691 mills.

Coté said excuse me. (To Smith), Coté said why don’t you bring up slide number 10. Smith said I don’t have slide 10. Yeah, it’s kind of hard to read it. Avery said but I will say, I’m on the finance committee, and along with Quisenberry, I think we kind of pushed Smith to have this kind of discussion in front of the full board here tonight because we want, obviously, you’re going to get a lot of feedback from residents when you talk about raising their taxes because that’s what we’re talking about doing here, right? I mean, there’s no way to sugarcoat that. I’m okay with it for the fact that I see into the future and that our costs keep going up. The Oakland County police services, the assessing services, the attorney, all that stuff continues to grow, so I feel like there’s just more and more pressure on our budget every year. I mean, I don’t like to pay any more taxes than we have to either because it’s coming out of my pocket, but I also want a functioning city that we can be proud of and know that things are being taken care of. My only issue, and I brought it up in the finance committee, is I feel, and I noticed that you reduced the administrative salary ask from $51[,000] down to $36[,000], and I’m not sure that we talked about that specifically in the finance committee where that money came off of. Smith said we didn’t.

Avery said yeah, so I’m a little confused by that, but to your general point that we need qualified people in our positions because we don’t have many, so everybody has to be strong, I agree with that to a point, but we are a small city, and we have to take that into consideration. We have 880 residents, not 3,000, not 5,000, not 10,000, so I think there’s a happy medium there. So that’s why I thought that, to me, they’re like two different subjects, to me, pay increases and the tax increase because, I mean, they all work together ultimately in the budget, but that’s a big, that’s a big jump. $36,000 is a lot of money, $37,000. That’s taking up the $43.9 [$43,900] that we’re going to collect. Additionally, a lot of that’s going to be eaten up by the pay raises, and that’s what people are going to see. They’re not going to look at the fact that these services went up 13.4[%], that these assessing services are going up. They’re going to look and say, well, Geez, you raised my taxes, so you gave everybody a raise.

Rodgers said you know, that’s kind of sad that that is what’s, I agree, because I think we’ve all already heard people saying the rumors out, blah, blah, blah. The sad part about it is we can see with Ryan leaving, $95 an hour is not going to happen. It’s going to be twice that, and that’s not even saying that you’re, I don’t know, I’m not privy to who you guys are interviewing, but you don’t, it’s not going to stay at $95. Avery said no. Rodgers said so, these people that are currently in these positions, if they leave, no one’s coming in here to work for $15,000. They’re just not. That’s just not happening. You can go to Starbucks and make that much money now without the responsibility, without the hate calls, without the feelings, without the emotions, without the constant pressure. So, I guess I’m kind of, of the thought that, you know, we all know you get what you pay for, and if Smith leaves tomorrow, we’re not going to be able to find somebody, I would guess, for that much money to do all the things that we expect him to do. You know, we have big expectations, all these grants. Those, if you’ve ever written a grant, you know how long and how much that time takes to do that. Should our expectations be higher if we do pass this? Yeah, I think they should be. But I do think we need to kind of think about that, as all of these people have been, not all of them, some of them have been in these spots for a while. If they decide, I’m out, I can’t do this anymore for this amount of money.

Avery said but the reality is that that’s going to happen anyways. I don’t – (interrupting Avery), Rodgers said it isn’t fair to not pay our current people to stay, and yet if somebody new comes in, say, oh, yeah, well, we’ve got to pay more. I mean, you can’t find somebody for this anymore. That’s not really fair either. Avery said right, well, that’s kind of what we’re doing, though, because with Angela [Guillen, contract clerk]. Rodgers said for one person. Avery said yes. Rodgers said for one person. Avery said she’s coming in, and her ask is substantially more than what we’re paying. Rodgers said yes, for that one person, you’re right. Avery said so, I mean, it’s happening. Rodgers said but that doesn’t take up the entire, what is it, $47,000? Avery said $47,000 was $37,000 in salary increases over the $43[,000]. So, we’re netting $5,000, roughly $6,000.

Wylie said I’m going to let Quisenberry interject here.

Quisenberry said like Avery said, at the last budget meeting, there were some hard numbers placed in the proposals that we were given by Coté and Smith and that had to do with the administrative salaries, and we decided we don’t want to talk about that now because we wanted to have the whole council weigh in on what that number is going to be, that line item in the budget. That’s why we’re here with it. Since then, I see that, (to Smith), Quisenberry said you have sharpened your pencil a little more in there by dropping it, what, the 14-1 [$14,100]. I’m not sure where that dropped.

Smith said this slide shows where the 14-1 [$14,100] dropped. So, we took out the recommended in lieu of insurance coverage. Remember the consultant recommended that those people that are not getting health insurance – Quisenberry said yeah – (continuing), Smith said should get an in lieu of payment of $3,060. We dropped all those out, said we can’t do that right now. Maybe over time we’ll get there. And then the big recommendation to go to a 6% match on 401K. We dropped that to 4.5%. He said go to 3%, from 3% where you are today, go to 6%. We cut that in half and went to 4.5%. So those two changes, dropping the in lieu of health care and dropping the 1.5% out of our 401K match, that dropped to $14,000. Quisenberry said so that brought us down a little bit more so all of us get a chance to now see that because when we meet on – Smith said Wednesday – (continuing), Quisenberry said Wednesday, we’re going to have to put a hard number in there. We just didn’t want to put a hard number in there, and then at the 11th hour, the rest of the council wanted, would have wanted to have some sort of at least acknowledgment, ability to say yay or nay or express their thoughts. So, if, before we meet Wednesday, if you think that there needs to be a little bit more pencil sharpening in here, then let us know so that Wednesday we can hardwire that number in.

Wylie recognized Casey for a comment.

Casey said yeah, to address the issue of the attorney fees, as the committee interviewing attorneys has figured out, we had to deal with a (unintelligible) for Ryan. Nobody works for, no attorney works for $95 an hour. (To Rodgers), Casey said so, you’re right, it’s going to probably double. But at the same time, we only used half the $30,000. So, we figure that if we, and in the last several months, we’ve put together much better procedures to handle FOIA requests, which cost us a bundle in the past. We’re better at it now. And so, we can stay with it. That’s why the $30,000 stayed the same. As far as the rest of it goes, I don’t see any way that we cannot, we should do this. I don’t see any way that we can afford to cut back on any of these operating areas. It’s just, we have to retain people. We don’t have a choice on the police services. We can work with the Independence Township, but that’s not going to help us this year. But it could in the future. So, as we sit right now, I think that this is a solid proposal, and we ought to agree to it.

Wylie said OK, anybody else on council.

Wylie recognized Jones for a comment.

Jones said yeah, I just wanted to go back. So, if we do vote to remove the millage reduction and put that back in the tax bill, what is the thought process for how we make up for the rest of the increase for the budget? If, like, like, I’m just saying, perfect world, this gets passed, we do the reduced millage, what’s going to make up the, how will we be covering the – Smith said between the removal of the millage reduction, the .691, and the increase in taxable values because people’s homes are appreciating, between those two things, it equates to about $73,000. Jones aid OK. Smith said so, those two things alone allows us to create a balanced budget. Quisenberry said and that’s what we’re at here at $72,600. Jones said yeah, OK.

Quisenberry said and that doesn’t even, we haven’t earmarked any of the refund in police service money that we’re sitting on right now in this. Smith said in our fund balance. No, we haven’t talked about fund balance at all. Our fund balance is doing very well right now because the $97,000 police refund, what was it? Coté said yeah, $96[000]. Smith said that’s still in the bank, we haven’t touched it. So that’s, we have a healthy fund balance. Avery said and we have discussed, too, raising parking rates, fees, permits, that sort of thing. We haven’t made a final decision on that. Smith said that’s a good point. We did talk about that in our meetings.

Wylie recognized Jones for a comment.

Jones said yeah, I just, I mean, the thing that’s difficult about this is that we, as a community, have voted to keep this area the way that it is. And there are certain costs that are going to be associated with that. And it’s not going to be easy to swallow. But, I mean, at this point where we are, I mean, existence is expensive. I just, you know, yeah, I just think it’s going to be tough no matter what direction we go.

Wylie said OK. Anybody else want to speak?

Forte said I’ll say that I talked to a few people today about this, and I think we should maybe reword it so it’s not like the library millage, because that seems to be a point of contention. So, I’m not quite sure how we handle that. Because that definitely needs to be, like, addressed in some shape or form. But I think it goes without saying we have great people who are working for this city. It’s part of what makes Clarkston great is that you live here, you care. All, like, all three of you care so much. Coté doesn’t care so much. I’m just kidding. Coté’s a real problem. But I will say, like, it goes without saying that you guys always show up and you’re always doing the best you can. And that goes without saying, I wish we could pay you guys more. Like, I’m sure my husband is like, that’s not how you run a business. But, like, I’m sorry, this isn’t a business. This is a city. This is where my kid is going to grow up, hopefully more kids. Like, I just really think that you guys are the backbone of what makes Clarkston, Clarkston. And maybe one day this will not be a problem, and we’ll figure it out and we’ll get bigger and better at certain things. I think we’re already on our way. I think there’s a lot of great people in the city who are working to make that happen. On the council, off the council, citizens, like, I just really think that, I mean, yes, it’s a lot of money. I know, like, I’m an average tax, like, when you said the average is like $300,000, that’s like my house. But there’s people who have million-dollar houses and this is going to impact them much more. I mean, they have much more money. And not to say that everyone has unlimited money who is at that bracket. Like, it’s going to hurt everyone in different ways. But I do think, like, if we want to maintain the city and want to maintain Clarkston, this is the cost of it. Like, I don’t know. And I know someone’s going to be pissed and so on and so forth. But it’s part of having good infrastructure. And good infrastructure includes people. Like, I mean, I wish it was all free, but it’s not. So, I mean, I can’t thank all of you guys. I mean, it’s like we’re talking around you guys, but you’re in the room. Like, I appreciate what you do. I love living in Clarkston. And it wouldn’t happen without you guys. And that needs to be acknowledged sometimes because you guys deal with a lot of bullshit. Whether it’s annoying people or great people or just crazy days or working on grants on your weekends, like, that’s a real part of what makes Clarkston great is all these little people, like, joining together. Like, Cara [Catallo] doing the signs for the historic, like, signage in Clarkston. Like, Carol [Eberhardt] doing the, like, the little people who are going to play music. Like, it takes all of us, you know what I mean, like, but I really think that’s what brings our city together is the fact that there’s so many great people making things even better. And I know it’s not perfect all the time. And there’s going to be backlash, because there’s going to be more taxes. But there’s a real value to what is Clarkston. And l like, I think for this cost, I think we have to pay it, like, I mean, I just want you guys to know that, like, I appreciate you guys. Like, I think it needs to be said sometimes. Wylie thanked Forte. Forte said yeah.

Wylie asked Rodgers if she wanted to make a comment. Rodgers said no, I think I said enough.

Jones said I’m sorry. Listen, like, salaries, totally notwithstanding, I think that the important thing that we need to look back at is that where we are getting completely sandbagged on this budget is the Oakland County Assessing Services and the building stuff. So, at the end of the day, like, you know, salaries, salaries, things are going to happen, it’s the larger cost of doing business as the City of the Village of Clarkston that is what’s getting, is where the bigger thing is. And so that’s where I think that my larger concern is about the budget, so . . .

Forte said can we package more services with Independence Township to get better deals. Smith said well, I talked with Chuck Phyle about several things. The assessing, the building department, code enforcement services. They have a code enforcement officer on the ground. Sewer billing. It’s not a huge savings for the city but turning that over to them is one less thing that we have to do. So, it allows us to focus on the Clarkston-specific things that we want to focus on. I know we don’t necessarily, we’re not trying to throw in the towel and say we’re going to become the Clarkston subdivision of Independence Township. We’re not ready to do that. We don’t want to do that. We want to maintain our own independence, but we have to look at how we can work smarter and more efficiently. And that does involve partnering with the township. We have to look at that. I feel very strongly about that.

Smith said so, we’re looking at everything that’s on the table. You know, we talked about even DPW [Department of Public Works] services. Do we have the township run our DPW department? I’m not in favor of that because we have a lot of things that I have Jimi [Turner, DPW supervisor] and Carson [Danis, DPW laborer] do that are only the city. And we would lose some, I think we’d lose some customization of the work that he does if we turn it over to the township. Not to say they do a bad job, but I think we like, we’re used to Turner being out there sweeping the streets, and Turner being out there and pothole patching. Rodgers said well, I do think we have to be careful, too, that we maintain what we find attractive about the city. You know, if we become Independence Township, that’s not what we want to do.

Wylie said can we keep that discussion for another day. Because we’ve got a lot to talk about right now.

Wylie said I just wanted to add because I haven’t really said anything. In our budget committee meetings, I was probably the most opposed initially to removing the library millage reduction, and I have been very vocal about it in the past. I think it was back in 2015 that there was a big push to have it removed, and I was extremely opposed to it at that time. (To Smith), Wylie said you worded it perfectly. You said, our backs are up against the wall, and that’s how I do it. Our backs are up against the wall, and I think this is the time to remove that library millage reduction.

Smith said I think it’s not the last time our backs are up against the wall. Wylie said no. Smith said I think every year we’re going to have our challenges in front of us, but right now, I don’t see how we balance the budget without doing this. Next year, we may have to look at something different because our backs are up against the wall, because XYZ costs went up – Wylie pointed to the audience and said hang on, hang on. Smith said so, it’s what we have to do this year. We’ll take next year as it comes.

Wylie said before I open it up to the public, I want to say, does anybody else on council have questions or comments. OK, if you speak, I would like to keep it on this topic. We are talking about our fiscal year budget challenges. We’re talking about removal of the library millage. We’re not talking about things we’re doing in the future. So, if anybody would like to speak, please raise your hand.

Wylie recognized Carol Eberhardt for a comment.

Eberhardt said I guess my question is about the building department. Is there a reason why you didn’t look at bringing it back to the city and doing it here in-house? Smith said right. I have talked to Dave Moran at the township about this and what his experience was with inspectors. It’s not, you know, back in the day, we had our own building official, a building inspector, that might do all services, plumbing, electrical, carpentry, all of it, HVAC. Eberhardt said back in my day, we didn’t. We had individual inspectors. Smith said so, that’s essentially what we have through Carlisle/Wortman. Could we make, you know, we don’t have enough to keep them busy, our own little city. So, I’d have to find somebody that’s working with other, like Holly or Lake Orion or wherever, and they do our inspections as well. That is becoming a challenge, to find that individual that’s open to doing that. What we’re finding is they’re more going to the realm of what we’re proposing with the township, is going with the township and inheriting all their inspectors, rather than going individual contractors. Eberhardt said well, basically what happened before was we had an admin person here in the city that handled doing building permits. Smith said correct. Eberhardt said we contracted with Carlisle/Wortman for one building head. We had our own inspectors, specific already, that worked on a contractual basis. They weren’t on retainer. And I’m wondering how many building permits we actually have. Do we have a lot of activity that warrants having – Smith said well, in 2024, we probably had, at any given time, we probably had, fifteen, twelve to fifteen open permits. In 2025, I fear, this is why I’m really fearful of fixed rate retainers, is we could drop off. Let’s say there’s tariffs on lumber that drive up lumber costs and the building takes a total dive, which is a very real possibility. We might only have two building permits. It’s not going to be that many, but let’s say we only have ten the whole year. It doesn’t pay to have, you know, have somebody on, you know, retainer. Eberhardt said I agree. Smith said working with the township, that $30,000 that they’re proposing would cover all building and inspections and code enforcement, all of that. And I, yeah, I’m kind of playing the averages a little bit, trying to decipher how many permits we would have, but that’s a very good deal.

Eberhardt said you know, can I just add something. Smith said sure. Eberhardt said the one concern about having the building department out of our hands, which was a consistent problem after it left, was the historic district houses and the commission, the building inspector knowing that they had to go to the historic district commission before they could start work. And having it offsite in Springfield Township, I thought it was horrible for our residents. They had to hike it over there to pull a permit. We don’t, we didn’t have anybody that watched the village. When it was in-house, our inspector drove around before she came to work to see if there was any dumpsters and caught people building without permits. You don’t have that kind of service when you’re, the people that are taking care of you are out of our jurisdiction. And I’m going to use Oakland County as an example. We contract with Oakland County. We don’t have service unless there’s a problem here with Oakland County, and most of us have to be honest with that. They’re not here because they’re too busy working in the township. And when I inquired about it, they’re like, well, when you have a problem, we come. So, you know, we see people blow stop signs. Wylie said you’re talking about police services. Eberhardt said right, police services. Wylie said OK, OK, let’s try to – Eberhardt said right – Wylie said OK, let’s keep it – Eberhardt said right, which is part of it. But my point is we’re already contracting to outsiders that don’t exactly give us exemplary service for our money. Wylie said OK, OK, thank you. Ebehardt said and that’s my point.

Wylie said anybody else with comments or questions. Wylie said Cara Catallo has been waiting. And then Chet Pardee after that.

Catallo said I’ve expressed at the finance committee meetings because I go to those, believe it or not, and I’m still, I’m concerned about I think that it would be much better to have the building department in-house. I don’t think it’s impossible. I don’t think the research has been done so it might seem impossible. I’m concerned about the fact that, like, like, Chuck, Chuck Phyle’s here all the time. And it’s just like township’s great. Township’s great. Just like the presentation we just heard sounded like, you know, the sky is falling. We’re going to have to dissolve unless we partner everything with the township. And also, even though we’re partnering with the township for everything, I want a $17,000 raise. It’s just, to me, kind of troubling. I was here when we became the city. I understand why we became the city. I’m not sure there are a lot of people who remember that. But I kind of feel, like, this is, like, let’s just, you know, obviously the township wants the city. So, it’s, like, let’s just keep piecemealing it out until it’s a, you know, more of a done deal. But I just, I think that it would make more sense financially to have somebody part-time in the office handling the building department. I would do that above giving raises to everybody. And it’s just weird to hear, like, oh, no, we don’t have enough money, except we do to give myself a raise. I will say that the clerk definitely needs to be paid more than the clerk was paid because I’ve spoken with Tina Barton, who came in to help us. I don’t think she’s, like, stand on your own two damn feet. I don’t know who said that, but – Wylie said the state – (continuing), Catallo said but Barton is, I don’t know if that, you said they said that literally. Smith said yes. Catallo said it sounds peculiar to me. But I will say that Barton will come in and speak to the council about why it’s important for the clerk to be paid as much. But I don’t see why the city manager needs to be paid so much more above the clerk when it seems like it could be closer. Or asking for a raise in two parts seemed more reasonable than such a giant jump at the same time as saying, like, and the city is going to shut down. But that’s my, you know, that’s my two cents. Also, the idea that there are a bunch of federal grants, like, I follow the news. I don’t think there are going to be a lot of federal grants. So, I believe in trying to get grants. But depending on them, it seems like, like you missed that ship that was several years ago when they were more prevalent. But that’s, that’s my opinion, and I wish that we would discuss bringing the building department back in-house.

Wylie thanked Catallo and recognized Pardee for a comment.

Pardee said yes, I think I’m probably the only person in this room that’s ever suggested that we should consider having a tax increase. We’ve been paying off the bond issue. And I said I think we need to replace that bond issue with something else. The tax rate for the citizens will be the same. And when we lost the, and then when we paid off the other one, I felt the same. So again, I may be the voice in the wilderness. So, I feel badly about us considering reneging on the library millage. I think we made a commitment to the citizens. And I think we ought to continue to maintain our commitment. I wonder, is it possible legally for council to decide, okay, we’re going to put the library millage on the tax bill? It seems like a tax increase. And I didn’t think that the city could increase the taxes without a vote of the citizens. So, I’d appreciate some legal opinion about that, that literally gives city council the capability to do that. The other thing that bothered me in Smith’s presentation at some point there about three-quarters of the way through, he says, I’m concerned that in the future that we can’t afford to be a city. That kind of felt like we were going to give up. And I’m on Catallo’s side on this one, that I think we need to become, we need to continue to be a city. And I gave Al Avery a communication I created this afternoon from my involvement in a city council meeting in 2016 when one of the council members stood up and pointed his finger at me and yelled, who gave you permission to negotiate with Independence Township? Well, I asked Avery, is he still alive? And he’s still alive. (To Pardee), Wylie said you’ve got 30 seconds left. Pardee said I give up.

Wylie said OK and recognized Forte.

Forte said I had the same question legally about the tax bill. That was something I wanted to talk to our lawyer tonight but wanted to take part of it. Jones said I was going to say, can we not pull the language from that 2014 motion? Forte said but it does seem weird that we’re using, it seems a little convoluted to, like, say we’re using this. I think we should separate it and maybe just put it on the ballot for people. Wylie said well, it’s not on the ballot. We’re voting on it. There’s nothing on the ballot. Forte said I know, I’m saying that. Pardee said I believe there legally should be. The only comment that I’ll make is on Wednesday in our finance committee meeting, I’ll present some information that really is within the salary survey that was done, that has some different numbers in it. Wylie said OK. I come to some different calculations. And I’m not convinced that anybody on city council understands what’s in that salary study. Wylie said that was your, that’s your three minutes.

Wylie said anybody else, questions or comments.

Wylie said OK. Quisenberry than Avery.

(To Avery), Wylie said do you want to respond to what Pardee said.

Avery said well, no, I don’t. I mean, it’s nice to say that you’re for a tax increase, but nobody’s going to vote for that. You know that, right? I mean, if we put that on the ballot, what do you think the chances are that it’s going to pass? I would vote for it, but not many. An unidentified woman in the audience said but it is a tax increase. Avery said well, no, no, I’m talking about above and beyond here. I am a lawyer, but I’m not versed in why we can do it. But I think it’s because the city council actually cut the tax. OK. So, I think they have the authority to bring it back if they want to. The unidentified woman said I think. So, we just have to know. That’s all. Avery said well, we’ll check with Ryan. The unidentified woman said yeah. Yeah. Avery said we’re not going to do anything illegal. We’re not going to raise people’s taxes without some proper authority to do so. So, I understand that. But to your point, that would be great. In my mind, I’d like more services. I’d like to have a building department. I’d love to have all that stuff. But is somebody going to write the check for that? I mean, look at our budget now. We’re already up against it. Yeah. Pardee said and the other thing I didn’t mention I’ll talk about on Wednesday is I haven’t heard anything about roads. Wylie said rose, oh roads, I’m sorry.

Wylie said Quisenberry’s been waiting to make a comment or question.

Quisenberry said just based on the public comment, I agree with Catallo in that if we’re going to be looking at options for building inspections outside of the county, and Independence certainly was up there as an option, there is another option. I’d like to see numbers for doing it ourselves so we can compare with what the cost would be for Independence. Just to know. And then make the better financial decisions on it. As far as Pardee’s tax increase, we may have to address that next year. I don’t think we’re going to have to this year. Can’t. But if we wanted to get some input on these numbers here to start plugging in where we have to in the budget, I think with the $72,000 that is at play here, the only way we can do it is by this library thing, where that’s going to take, you know, what, almost 60% of it. We’re gonna, because if not, then I don’t know how we’re going to make that up then, unless we want to, you know, screw up our fund balance. So, it sounds like we wanted, Avery and I and you heard from the council, that we think that we want to go with these numbers, but there’s still some work to be done. That has to do with the building, another option with it, and also if there’s any other sharpening that can be done at administrative salaries.

Avery said yeah, and to Catallo’s point, just because we’re – I know practically you’re thinking, well, we signed on with the township, we’re probably on with the township, and it’s going to be hard to uncouple from that. But if something presented itself where we could get someone that would do it at a reasonable rate that made sense for the city, why wouldn’t we look at that? That’s just, that’s common sense, I think. So, it’s up to us as a council to keep busting on Smith.

Quisenberry said I don’t think we’ve done due diligence in finding that option. Avery said true, but it did come a little bit late in the game here. I mean, to try to find someone to do that sort of thing, it’s going to take a few months, I would think. And we’ve got less than a month and probably about a month and a half to approve a budget. But that doesn’t prevent him from doing that (unintelligible).

Wylie said a little bit off topic, so Greg Babb, you’re here from Independence Township, and are you the assessor? Babb said I am, yes. [The township web site lists him as interim director of assessing.] Wylie said and I’m sorry I didn’t catch your last name. Babb said Greg Babb. Wylie said OK, did you want, I assume Smith invited you, or are you – Babb said I’m just here observing if there are any questions, just both here, just observing it all. I mean, I’ve heard a lot of people talking about, you know, the township taking over. I do live in Independence Township, right around the corner on Clarkston Road. And it’s more of, you’ve already, you’re contracting out, your assessing services to the Oakland County. And the person, Rob Doyle, I know very well, you know, they’re only in the community, they parachute in a couple of times a year where we are right up the road, and we drive through every day. So, I, we feel that it’s more of a, it just kind of makes sense. It’s not like we’re taking over the township, but what we’re doing is bringing the small-town mom-and-pop service field to the assessing, where you’re gonna know my face, and you’re gonna know who I am, and I’m going to be more of a, a service provider to the community, which I don’t know that you’re getting currently. So, it’s not that we’re looking to absorb the village, the city of the village, but we’re looking to just, like, embrace what you hold true and dear also, which I think we will do tremendously. And we’re right up the road, so if you’ve got a problem, you don’t have to drive to Pontiac to talk to me. You can, you know, you drive by after you drop your kids off, or go into the new Meijer right there. So, I just feel like we’ll be more accessible in a way. So, it just seems it maybe makes sense for both of us to work this out together. Wylie said thank you.

Wylie said does anybody have any questions for Babb?

No questions.

Wylie said thanks for coming today. Babb said oh, thank you.

Wylie recognized Catallo for a comment.

Catallo said yeah, not so much for Babb, but just to reach out to the council to say it might be worthwhile to talk to people on the Board of Review to see what their experiences are with the county, just to get their, their feel for it. Because I feel like they know better than anybody, and they could say, like, if Rob Doyle’s hard to get in touch with or not. Because I think they’ve been working with him for many years at this point. Wylie said honestly, from what I’ve heard, and I’ve talked to people on the Board of Review for a long time, I don’t think there’s been any, any questions or comments or concerns about Rob Doyle. I think everyone seems to think he does a great job. But it’s just the cost of it now. Babb said and that’s been my experience, is going to different municipalities and having, I have a lot of colleagues and friends who work for the county. I actually started at equalization down in Oakland County, and the appraisers and the assessors there are fantastic. I, it’s nothing against them at all. And it’s a really terrible position they’ve been put in as employees. Wylie said yeah. Babb said and their gonna – Wylie said they’re gonna suffer – (continuing), Babb said their lives are going to change dramatically. So, it’s not, I feel for them tremendously. Wylie said because other communities are talking about making, other communities are looking at other options. Babb said oh, yes. Oh, yeah. You’re not alone in that. It’s a lot, a lot of communities are looking for other opportunities for their assessing services.

Wylie recognized Catallo for a comment and said real short.

Catallo said it’s really quick. I thought I remembered hearing at the last finance meeting that Independence Township is courting some of these other communities to try to do their assessing beyond Clarkston. (To Babb), can you speak to that, please? Babb said yes. We have entered into agreement with Springfield Township to do their assessing services as well. And, but that’s it. Because we just decided with our neighboring communities, we have an opportunity because we are an in-house assessing service that we can take it on with these economy of scales. And we’re just going to kind of right-size the test and figure everything out to make it so everybody gets their own community. We just extend our borders for assessing and that would be that .

(To Smith), Wylie said OK, do you have enough. (To Coté), Wylie said do you guys have enough for our next finance committee meeting. Smith said yes. Wylie said OK.

Item #11C – Discussion: Accepting Online Bill Payments (Video time mark 2:08:07):

Wylie said all right, let’s move on. Item #11C’s discussion, accepting online bill payments. Thank you, Coté. And who’s speaking on this? Is this going to be Coté or Smith? Coté said what’s this? Wylie said yes. We’re on online bill payments.

Coté said yeah, but let me just interject here and talk about that real quick. (Coté walked to the podium.)

Coté said distinguished council, thank you. I’ve got a few things on the bill payments. And I wrote this down because I wanted to make sure that I covered everything, so just bear with me. So currently, right now, residents may use e-checks, ACH, debit, Visa, MasterCard, Discovery, American Express, and many other credit cards to pay sewer, tax, parking citations, and gazebo rentals. The sewer, tax, parking, and general account have been accepting these types of payments since I’ve been here. You may visit the city website to make these payments. Simply select how do I, and then pay online from the dropdown, and then select either taxes, sewer, gazebo, or parking violations. Also keep in mind that your financial institution can set up a repetitive payment, and that would work very, very well with the sewer bills since it’s a fixed rate and you never have to touch it. You can make sure that that payment’s delivered to the city by such-and-such a date, and it’s automated.

Wylie said did not know that. Coté said so, I’d be more than happy to help anybody. I simply, or I did that recently with a resident, and I walked her through. She uses Chase. We set her up with the sewer payment, and she was very, very happy. Especially, she was a resident and spent some time in Florida during the winter, so it’s going to work out for her. And lastly, you can always use the U.S. mail system. You can use our dropbox right outside the city, and we check that on a daily basis. Any other questions?

Wylie said questions, anybody.

No questions.

Wylie said anybody out there have any questions or comments.

An unidentified woman said I actually had an experience with this because I did spend four months in Florida, and I didn’t get the postcard forwarded, so I missed the payment, and I didn’t know I could do it. I just wanted to come out and pay it in full, so maybe you could help me. I don’t understand. Coté said he’d more be more than happy to do that. The unidentified woman said when that additional assessment goes away, you have to manually go in and change it. Coté said change the autopayment.

Pardee said so why did those bills say do not forward? The unidentified woman said yeah, they didn’t. Did yours not get forwarded either? Pardee said I changed during the last ten years. Coté said I believe that’s probably a false nomenclature. The unidentified woman said I did a temporary change of address, though. Pardee said right. The unidentified woman said and I didn’t get it. Pardee said the bill itself says do not forward. The unidentified woman said oh, they didn’t forward it. Pardee said I was assuming it was the city that had that requirement, and so it doesn’t get forwarded.

Wylie said OK, so you’ll talk to Coté and he’ll get it together.

The unidentified woman said also, for those people who do snowbird, I spoke to Independence Township, Paul Brown, and he said that I can have the township come out and shut my water off from the road for the four months, and they won’t charge the city, and then we wouldn’t pay anything. Coté said is that for water or sewer? An unidentified man said water. The unidentified woman said water. Coté OK, that’s handled by the township. We only handle the sewer portion. The unidentified woman said OK. Pardee said that’s a good tip because the fixed charge doesn’t occur in the usual way. The unidentified woman said yes, and I didn’t know. I turn my water off in the house. They’ll turn it off from the road. Wylie said and then not charge it. The unidentified woman said right. Wylie said I don’t know about water, so I’m not going to ask questions about it. The unidentified woman said I thought it was sewer also, no? No. Water.

Wylie said anything else on accepting online bill payments.

No comments.

Wylie said and before we adjourn the meeting, I know Quisenberry has something.

Quisenberry said I just wanted to ask, Coté reminded me when he said you can pay on the website. That made me remember the last meeting we had, the problems we were having with our website and the provider, and you were going to talk with them to see if that could get resolved. If there’s been any status or update on that.

Smith said well, Forte’s been looking at what it would take to do those forms. I think it is a little bit more involved than you originally anticipated. Forte said yeah, I did it this weekend. It took me all weekend, but it is done. Smith said OK. Forte said so, we just have to upload the PDFs, and people will have to e-mail them. It won’t be like a form. They’ll have to fill out the form. They can print it. I have on there, like, if you click a button at the bottom, if you’re on your computer, you can click the button at the bottom, and it will e-mail. It will automatically add it to an e-mail. But if not, like, you can print it out, drop it off at the office. So, it won’t be like a form anymore.

Rodgers said what are you talking about? Forte said the website. There’s tons of forms. There’s like fifteen forms. I learned this, yeah, the hard way. So now I know all the forms in our city and everything that goes into these forms. But they are all fillable. So, like, people can download them, type them in on their computer, and then submit to the city via e-mail.

Quisenberry said but that’s a Band-Aid. Forte said it is. Quisenberry said it doesn’t address the fact that they’re not providing what they said they would when they were assigned to sign onto this. Smith said we’re still working with them on that. They still maintain they have. (Unintelligible comments.)

Agenda Item #12, Adjourn Meeting (Video time mark 2:14:02):

Wylie said anything else on this topic or anything else before we adjourn the meeting. I didn’t tell them to adjourn the meeting. I need a motion to adjourn.

Motion by Jones; second Forte.

Motion to adjourn passed by unanimous voice vote.

Wylie said the meeting is adjourned at 9:14.

Resources:

• • Link to video recording here 
  • 05-12-2025 – City council packet