Category: Street Paving

Introduction:

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

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

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

Agenda Item #2, Pledge of Allegiance (video time mark 0:00:03):

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

(Pledge said.)

Wylie said thank you.

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

Wylie said next is on our agenda is the roll call. (To Angela Guillen, city clerk), Wylie said if you would take the roll call, please.

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

Gary Casey was absent.

Wylie thanked Guillen.

Agenda Item #4, Approval of Agenda – Motion (video time mark 0:00:42):

Wylie said and Item #4 is Approval of the Agenda. I need somebody to make a motion to approve the agenda as it’s presented and a second.

Motion by Avery; second Jones.

Wylie said any discussion?

No discussion.

Motion to approve the agenda passed by unanimous voice vote.

Wylie said the agenda is approved.

Agenda Item #5, Public Comments (video time mark 0:01:04):

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

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

Wylie said Item #5 is Public Comments.

(Wylie read the rules for public comments.)

Wylie said would anybody like to make a public comment?

No comments.

(Chet Pardee shook his head.) Wylie said no? OK. You know, what you say, this is more appropriate for this, the meeting. You wrote down public comments for the public hearing? Is that what you intended? Pardee said I wrote questions to Jonathan [Smith, city manager] about the proposed budget. Wylie said OK. Pardee said what was in it, what wasn’t in it, I don’t know. I felt if I stood up there and read that, they’d say, wait until Smith’s presentation. Smith said that’s what we would say. Wylie said OK.

Wylie said anybody else with public comments?

No comments.

Agenda Item #6 – FYI: (video time mark 0:02:05):

Item #6a – Mill Pond Public Hearing June 3^rd (video time mark):

• • Flyer, Notice of Hearing to Establish Lake Level, Establish Special Assessment District, and Confirm Special Assessment District Boundary (page 3/63 of the council packet)
  •  Circuit Court Hearing Notice (page 4/63 of the council packet)

Wylie said Item #6 is FYI. We’ve got a Mill Pond Public Hearing on June 3, and this is going to be at the courthouse, Sixth Circuit Court for the County of Oakland. Notice of hearing to establish lake level, establish special assessment district, and then confirm special assessment district boundary. It is June 3rd, which is next Wednesday, a week from tomorrow, at 10:00 a.m. at Oakland County Circuit Court, courtroom of the Honorable Yasmine Poles on Telegraph Road. And there’s information in the packet if anybody’s interested in attending. And this applies to the Clarkston Mill Pond and establishing the lake levels. It’s a formal process for managing and maintaining water levels over time. And at this point, I believe there’s not a special assessment district. Is that correct? Smith said correct. Wylie said and so, this would be, at this point, there’s no money being charged, but this is about, it’s not about approving assessments. It’s about establishing an assessment district. And if you, you don’t have to go, but if you can, there’s more information in the packet. Jones said yeah, I mean, the lake level thing, I think would be the most interest to people. Wylie said yeah, I’d like to go, but I can’t.

Wylie said any comments on that or any other FYI?

No comments.

Agenda Item #7 – City Manager’s Report (video time mark 0:03:26):

• • 05-26-2026 City Manager Report (page 5/63 of the council packet)

Wylie said Item #7, the city manager’s report. Pardee said is that a document that you were reading in the packet? Wylie said yes. (Pardee made an unintelligible comment.) Smith said no, it’s a late addition. We just got it in the mail today.

(To Smith), Wylie said did you have anything you wanted to say or add to your city manager’s report?

Rodgers said when they talk about the lake level, is that the Mill Pond level? Smith said the Mill Pond level, not Parke Lake or – it’s just the Mill Pond.

(To Wylie), Smith said no, I don’t have anything to add.

Wylie said OK, so if there’s something about DPW truck lease and office computer server, and Forte has something.

Forte said yeah, sorry. You said in the last meeting, if there was anything we wanted to add to this, like you were saying like a ticker of some sort, like to kind of like track things. Smith said yeah, I’m thinking of some kind of standard dashboard that would be in every, you know, probably we’ll push it on the two pages, but just some general data that will always refresh your memory. Oh, we have this many homes. Oh, we have this many residents, all that kind of stuff. Forte said I was also thinking about that. And I was wondering if we could do something that’s like, sometimes we like kind of table things and we’re going to come back to it or like you’re going to do stuff on your end. Could we kind of keep like a dashboard of like ongoing – Smith said sure – (continuing), Forte said because I know like you’ll apply for grants or you’ll do X, Y, or Z and we move on. You know what I mean? But it’s still being worked on. If we could just keep like a running list here, even if we don’t touch on it, we know it’s like, it’s in the oven, but it’s not – Smith said hasn’t been forgotten. Forte said yeah, totally. Jones said a 30, 60, 90 day outlook would be a good way of, like a good framework for that. Forte said OK, yeah.

Wylie said so that dashboard is for this city management report? Smith said yes. I was thinking it was the email that you sent. Smith said no, no – Wylie said OK – (continuing), Snith said no, in this, not to say some of the things couldn’t go in there as well, because I kind of back and forth between the two, but no, the thought was this report is something that goes before council and gives you the opportunity to review and see, where did we leave off on this?

Rodgers said I think it’s a great idea, like an open actions item and it stays on there until it’s resolved – Smith said yes – (continuing), Rodgers said like park fees and like the whole FOIA thing, like just as a refresher to all of our minds that we haven’t forgotten. Yeah, that’s a great idea.

Forte said for work, we used to do that, like we would have like a list, like for all the projects we would have like by last name, but obviously you know how to do all this stuff, but just so we didn’t forget something.

Wylie said anybody else on this topic?

Quisenberry said on the office computer server, last meeting we had, wasn’t that on there? I see it here. Wylie said we talked about it at the finance committee meeting. Smith said no, the office computer, the server just came up this last week. Quisenberry said all right, that’s what it was. Wylie said he remembers it from the finance committee meeting. We talked every day, it was just going on that day, those days. Smith said it’s been kind of sporadic. I mean, it’s been running the last week or so, or last weekend, as in, don’t jinx it, but you know. Greg Coté [treasurer] said it’s stabilized. Smith said it’s stabilized right now, but I think there’s a need coming. Wylie said OK.

Agenda Item #8 – Consent Agenda (video time mark 0:06:41):

• • 04-27-2026 – Minutes, Regular Council Meeting (page 6/63 of the council packet)
  • 05-11-2026 – Draft Minutes, Regular City Council Meeting (page 8/63 of the council packet)
  • 05-26-2026 – Treasurer Report (page 10/63 of the council packet)
  • 05-13-2026 – Revenue and Expenditure Report for the Period Ending 04-30-2026 (page 11/63 of the council packet)
  • 05-01-2026 – Fisher Consulting invoice for the period October 2025 through April 2026 (page 21/63 of the council packet)

Wylie said Item #8 is the consent agenda. Final minutes of the April 27, 2026, regular meeting; draft minutes of the May 11 regular meeting; and treasurer’s report for May 26, 2026. Wylie said I’ll need a motion and a second to accept the consent agenda as it’s presented.

Motion by Rodgers; second Quisenberry.

Wylie said questions, comments, anything from council members?

Forte said yeah, I have some questions about our legal bill. It’s like right at the end. So, I was looking at this, and there’s quite a bit for intergovernmental agreements. I was just wondering, we agreed against doing an intergovernmental, whatever the number is – Wyllie said for 2025? Forte said yeah, some number. Wylie said ‘25, is that what it was? Forte said OK, but there’s a lot of charges on here for that, and I’m wondering if that just means that these are just – (interrupting Forte), Jones said if I’m looking at the dates correctly, I think that, yeah, some of these are from 2025. Smith said yes, some of these are old charges from October. That’s what Jones was saying.

Smith said so, this October 28 intergovernmental agreement – Forte said yeah – (continuing), Smith said that was, Gerry [Fisher, city attorney] has not billed us for a while, and so this was his catching up. Forte said OK. Smith said so yes, there were a lot of intergovernmental agreements, and these were agreements that we were working with the township on. Forte said oh. But it’s not like the, whatever that number is, you know what I mean?

Rodgers said is it possible to like have him like say what it pertains to? Because it’s really hard to like keep track if we have no idea. Avery said well, some of it is – (interrupting Avery), Jones said attorney/client. Avery said yeah, you don’t want to give out too much information, because it’s a public document, and then if it discloses something that was discussed in a closed meeting, or is an attorney-client privilege, then that could be a problem. Could he provide some more? I mean – Wylie said I would say – Avery said certainly ask for details.

Wylie said hopefully we can get him to give us more timely billing, and I’d say if any council members have questions, maybe ask Smith first, and if it needs to continue on in council in front of everybody – Forte said sorry, yeah – Wylie said you can do that. Smith said no, I can give the detail on any one of these charges, or, but yes, I agree with what Avery’s saying. We didn’t want to put in too much detail there.

Quisenberry said but I do think the timeliness should be improved – Smith said absolutely – (continuing), Quisenberry said because here, these last couple budget meetings, we were looking at our cost for attorney fees, and we thought, we’re going to be fine with it, and now it looks like we’re getting dinged for that stuff, which is indicating that we may not be. Jones said mm-hmm, because this, yeah, this line right here, that last line, that one-time credit for city budgetary considerations, like, and we’re just now seeing – Smith said yes, so he did, to his credit, he did give us a credit of $2,000. So, it reduced it from $7,000 to $5,000. Forte said why? Smith said just because he’s trying to be a good, good community citizen. Forte said wow.

Wylie said anything else on the consent agenda?

No comments.

Wylie said OK, we had a motion from Rodgers; second Quisenberry.

Wylie said anything else from council members?

No comments.

Wylie said anything from the public?

No comments.

Motion to accept the consent agenda was approved by unanimous voice vote.

Wylie said the consent agenda is approved.

Agenda Item #9, Unfinished Business (video time mark 0:10:14):

Wylie said Item #9 is Unfinished Business.

Item #9a – Resolution – Parking Lot Sealcoating and Restriping (video time mark 0:10:17):

• • Resolution – Parking Lot Sealcoating and Restriping (page 24/63 of the council packet)
  • 05-22-2026 – Bid Comparison (page 25/63 of the council packet)
  • DNS Seal Coating & Striping Quotation (page 26/63 of the council packet)
  • PrideShield Sealcoating LLC Quotation (page 28/63 of the council packet)
  • Lifewide Asphalt Services Quotation (page 34/63 of the council packet)
  • Lower Peninsula Striping and Sealcoating LLC Quotation (page 41/63 of the council packet)

Wylie said Resolution, Parking Lot Seal Coating and Restriping. And we have a resolution in the package.

(Wylie read the resolution.)

Wylie said and I guess Doug’s is now going by DNS Seal Coating.

Wylie said I’ll need somebody to resolve and somebody to support this resolution.

Resolution by Forte; second Rodgers.

Wylie said any discussion or comments from the council members? (To Smith), Wylie said or maybe you wanted to go into anything first?

Smith said well, last month or last two weeks ago, we reviewed the Doug’s, right now DNS Seal Coating. I did obtain three other quotes as requested to see more quotes. Lower Peninsula did provide a very competitive quote, and it is cheaper. So, it is possible if council wishes, we can go with Lower Peninsula. I am somewhat partial to Doug’s and DNS because I know them. I know the work they do, quality work, and they’re very conscientious and he wants to keep the city happy. So, he always goes above and beyond. So, I have had very, very good luck with Doug’s. So, I’m, even though it’s $675 more, I think it’s justified.

Forte said and last year, were they the ones who came out and re-striped Buffalo after like we adjusted the triangles? Smith said no, that was a re-striping contractor. That’s all they did is striping. So that was something different.

(To Smith), Rodgers said is this DNS? Did they buy Doug’s Seal Coating or they just change their name? Smith said I think Doug’s technology is getting a little older. So, he’s merged with a younger gentleman. I don’t know if there’s – Wylie said it’s his nephew, I think. It’s a relative. Rodgers said so, we had work by the nephew or have we – (interrupting), Wylie said Doug is still around. Smith said Doug is still running. But the younger man is, and I think his name starts with S. So, D and S. Rodgers said gotcha. Smith said are the primary owners. Wylie said I can say they quoted me and I asked them, too, why aren’t you Doug’s Seal Coating? And that was the explanation I got.

Wylie said anybody else have any questions or comments on that? Well, if there’s no questions or comments, we also do need to have, no, never mind.

Avery said yeah, I have, I mean, the reason, thank you for getting the multiple quotes. I appreciate it. I guess I’m just wondering why we couldn’t use Lower Peninsula Striping and Seal Coating. I mean, the purpose of getting competitive bids is to find the least expensive. I mean, taxpayers are paying for this. We want to give them the most value for their money. I understand that we’ve got a relationship with Doug’s, DNS, and I appreciate that, but we’re not asking them to do brain surgery here. This is seal coating a parking lot or multiple parking lots. Unless you can tell me that Lower Peninsula Striping is missing something that DNS had. Smith said no, I don’t think they are. In fact, I called Doug, talked to Doug on the phone and I went through the details of Lower Peninsula’s. And he says, well, we’ve covered all the topics. So, he says, I don’t have anything to complain about.

Avery said did he have any references or anything? I mean, I know it’s a job to run around and find out if this guy does good work or not good work. Could be that Johnny come lately or has he been in business for a while, do we know? Smith said they provided some, it’s on their website. They have some references and nothing negative was on their website. So, I don’t have anything negative about Lower Peninsula at all. So that’s why I mentioned it earlier. I’ve kind of written this resolution slanted towards Doug’s clearly. If the council wants to override that and go with Lower Peninsula, that’s your prerogative.

Jones said I mean, just what does the charter say on this? Or is that only in the city services? Smith said it doesn’t, it says you will obtain multiple quotes. It doesn’t say you will always, let me put that, it doesn’t say you must select the lowest price provider. It says there can be something to the effect that there can be extenuating circumstances that might suggest you don’t go with the lowest cost. But yeah, I agree with Avery. All the things being equal, you should always go with the lower. The question is, are all the other things equal? There’s really no way of knowing for sure. I just have a very good history with Doug, but if you want to try the Lower Peninsula, that’s certainly the prerogative of council.

Wylie said of course, it’s just a judgment call. We do have a good history with them. They’ve done a good job. He’s sort of local. I think he’s in Independence Township. Smith said he is, yes, correct. He’s in Independence Township.

Wylie said so right now, we do have a resolution though to go with Doug’s.

Forte said I’ll move to amend it to go with the lower cost. (To Smith), said I’m sorry. Second Rodgers.

Wylie said OK. I don’t remember. Do we have to have a vote to amend it? Quisenberry said yeah, there’s a motion on the table. I think we have to vote. Smith said withdraw that motion, and then put in a new motion. Quisenberry said unless the maker of the motion wants to amend it. She has to make a – Forte said I already forgot, yeah. So, can I do what Smith just said?

Smith said so, Forte wishes to withdraw her motion, and then Rodgers supports, because you seconded. (To Forte), Smith said and then you can issue a new motion. Avery said you can amend it. Smith said with, I’ll approve this with the change to – Rogers and Smith said Lower Peninsula. Forte said what he said. Wylie said OK.

(To Guillen), Wylie said did you get – Guillen said yep. Forte thanked Guillen.

Wylie said OK, so any, now any discussion? Because now we have an amended resolution. This time it’s with, what are they called? Smith said Lower Peninsula. Wylie said Lower Peninsula. Lower Peninsula Striping and Seal Coating LLC. Smith said I would still want to add a 5% contingency to their $11,835 budget. So, I don’t know what that number works out to be, but let’s find out. Wylie said let’s see. $11,835 times five. So that’s $591.75 more. Coté said $12,165. Wylie said $12,000 – Coté said 165. Wylie said OK, so the resolution has to be corrected for the 5%. First of all, one, two, three. The fourth resolution, the fourth whereas has to say $11,835. And then the one below that with the 5% contingency makes it $12,165.

Wylie said any other discussion from council members?

No discussion.

Wylie said from the public?

No comments.

Wylie said all set?

(To Guillen), Wylie said would you do a roll call, please?

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

Wylie said and the resolution is adopted. Thank you.

Smith said just one point of clarification. So, when I did the 1.05 on top of the $11,835, I come up with $12,426. Coté said I think I got the top number wrong. Smith said 75. Wylie said $12,426.75? Smith said $12,426.75. That would be the total with the 5% contingency. Wylie said OK. Smith said just wanted to make sure that number’s on the record. Guillen said to repeat it one more time. Smith said $12,426.75.

Smith said all right, thank you. Wylie said thank you.

Agenda Item #10, New Business (video time mark 0:20:35):

Wylie said Item # 10A is new business.

Item #10a – Resolution: Hourly Parking Fee Change (video time mark 0:20:37):

• • Resolution – Paid Parking Hourly Fee Change (age 45/63 of the council packet)

Wylie said resolution, Hourly Parking Fee Change.

(Wylie read the resolution.)

Wylie said and this will be the choice of the person who makes this resolution. It’ll either be, could be something other than $1.25 or $1.50, but those are the recommended amounts per hour as soon as possible.

(Wylie continued reading the resolution.)

Wylie said and I’ll need somebody to make a resolution. And if you would pick a dollar amount, or if you, let’s, I don’t know, do you wanna talk about maybe a little bit more about the choices? I mean, I can see real pretty easily it’s $20,000 to $40,000.

Smith said so, Coté and I were just talking before the meeting that $1.25, if you look at the economics or the inflation index for the last eight and a half years since we installed this, $1.25 would just about get us even with – Wylie said 2018 – Smith said 2018 revenue. So, it’s not getting us ahead. I just, it’s just another perspective point I make to the council. $1.25 is kind of getting us back kind of on even par with what we were making in 2018. And $1.50 would get us ahead. But it all comes down to kind of the sensitivity to our local businesses. Will it make a difference on businesses? I think it’s key to point out that we still have a significant amount of free parking in the city. Granted, said you might have to walk a little bit. Of course, Main Street, we all continue to be free. Any parking on Main Street, any parking on the side streets, the angle parking on Depot, those, even down to the Methodist Church. All those areas are free. So, we’re not changing any of that. So, in that regard, there are options. So, somebody says, oh, golly, $1.50 is too much for me. I’ll walk. Well, there are options. So that’s, I think, something needs to be kept in mind is that there are options for those that don’t wanna pay $1.50 an hour. But I’ve been looking for input from council and what do you guys think?

Wylie said you know, I’ve always asked for people to make the resolution before. So, let’s have a discussion first. I’m assuming that we’ll vote, we’ll resolve to increase the parking fee. Let’s have a discussion and make it part of it. Do we wanna go to $1.25 or $1.50 an hour, or nothing at all?

Quisenberry said $1.50. Wylie said $1.50.

Forte said I would say $2. Wylie said $2? Forte said yeah, so I did some research. I just looked on my phone. So, Birmingham is $2, Fenton is $2.50, Brighton is $2.50, Traverse City is $1.75, Charlevoix’s $2. So the going rate is closer to $2. And, I mean, Brighton is $2.50, Fenton is $2.50. So, we wouldn’t be charging top rate. And I would extend the hours from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. – Smith said Monday through Saturday? Forte said I would maybe do the weekends free and see if, I don’t know. Smith said weekends free? (Unidentified council members said no, no.). Forte said so maybe just 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Because that’s what’s standard.

Wylie said how about we just focus on the dollar amount for now, and then, because I think that’s a bigger discussion. Smith said I was considering the hours of operation to be a subsequent. So, I would say maybe just vote on the dollar amount for now, and then we can bring that back, can always bring that back. It was actually in the finance committee’s list of suggestions of expanding hours of operation, too.

Forte said OK, can you add that to the next agenda? Smith said sure, yes, I’ll add that to the next agenda. Forte said so, it’s good to go.

Rodgers said so, refresh my memory, like, how do most people pay for this? Are they using an app? Are they putting money in the thing? Are they using their card? Like, how is it? I’m just thinking about, you know, how do they feel? Smith said logistics. More and more over time, more and more people use credit cards. When we first started out, it was probably 10% credit card, 90% cash. It’s not quite 50-50 now, but it’s probably 45% cards, 55% cash. So, and we don’t give change. So, if you don’t, let’s say it’s $1.50 an hour, and you only have $2.00, you won’t get your 50 cents back. It will prorate it. It’ll give you a little bit more than two hours. Let’s say you put in, you know, $2 for, let’s say it is $1.50 an hour. You would get, like, an hour and 15 minutes or something.

Wylie said is there a charge for using your credit card? Smith said there is a – Wylie said for the credit card user. Smith said for the credit card user, there is a, what is it, 3%-ish? Coté said yeah. Smith said yes. Coté said it needs to be, as they say.

Rodgers said so, and then, I know that we’ve talked about this, so I apologize, but is there, this whole app business, all of these places that Forte mentioned are all app-focused, and I know that it’s difficult for some at first to get that app, myself included, but now that I have it, it’s super easy. It’s, like, way easier than having to go to the kiosk or whatever. Is there any, not that we have to talk about that either tonight, but is there any thought about instituting that kind of thing, too? Smith said absolutely, that is something we can explore. In fact, one vendor, because our, let’s face it, our kiosks are getting older, and that is something we need to keep in mind. Those kiosks have about an eight-year shelf life, and the one in Washington and Main is on its eighth birthday right now. The Depot one is only about four, four and a half years old, so it’s younger, but the one on Main, we’re gonna have to replace that pretty soon. Begs the question, do I do more brick-and-mortar or hard kind of units on Main Street, or do we go, because some cities have gone 100% app. There is not a machine to be found. But in recognition, a lot of them will tell you, in recognition of the fact that older parkers don’t always have credit cards, and they, they’re kind of old school, they wanna put their dollar bill in there. So, it’s thought, maybe keep a couple around. If we were ever to put paid parking on Main Street, for example, I would not recommend you put kiosks up and down Main Street, even one every block. I think maybe we have the one in the Washington and Main, somebody really wants to pay with a kiosk, they can go there, otherwise they’d pay with an app. I don’t think it’s too far of a stretch, long way of answering your question, I don’t think it’s too far of a stretch to say to people, use the app. The vast majority of people are.

Rodgers said can you update your credit card with your, like if I put it in for two hours, and I’m in a restaurant, and now I’m there for four, can I, will I, does it automatically, just like the app would? Smith said yes, that’s one of the best benefits, is you wanna stay for dessert, oh, I’m running out of time, I can add another hour – Rodgers said with the app – (continuing), Smith said just from my seat in the restaurant. Rodgers said gotcha.

Wylie recognized Avery for a comment.

Avery said a couple of thoughts. One is, I mean, I’m not looking at it to raise the rates just to make more money above and beyond what inflationary pressure we already have. So, I feel like the dollar and a quarter is, in my opinion, is good. And we can always fiddle with the hours if we feel like, you know, it’s not enough or whatever, and we can always bump it again too, it’s just a change in the software, I assume, to update it. So, I feel like, I mean, there’s a part of me that’s like – Forte said can we just do it all at once? Avery said as far as? Forte said the hours, I’m just saying. Wylie said right now, we’re gonna just do the, just do it now. Jones said I think in terms of the discussion – Avery said I mean, the original purpose of, my recollection, was with this whole parking thing was to help with the maintenance of the lots, sidewalks, because obviously, when we have more traffic in town, they’re using the lots, they need upgrading. And I feel like it’s doing that. We’re able to pay for roads, repavement. We redo all the parking lots when they need it. I know if there’s something coming up where we think we’re gonna have to do a major upgrade on a parking lot, like take it down and redo it all, then I would probably be hip to raising it more. But if it was just a maintenance thing, I feel like, I don’t wanna go too far down the road, I guess, is my thought. To me, a $1.25 seems fair. It keeps us on the level that we’ve been going on. I don’t wanna stick it to the restaurants, because this is really a tax on the restaurants, because of the way we have it set up. I mean, the hours that we charge for parking is at night when people are there to use the restaurants. You know, the other businesses in town, which we don’t have a lot of them, other than the restaurants, but we do have other, they get a free ride, right? People get to park in the lot, and they don’t have to pay Monday through Friday, 9:00 to 5:00, you know, or 9:00 to 4:00. So, I think we should be cognizant of the fact, because, I mean, we’re fortunate, we have five good restaurants within walking distance, and I’d rather keep it that way. So why add more than we need to? That’s my opinion.

Wylie recognized Jones for a comment.

Jones said I wanna touch on the app stuff, just before that gets out of, I think that having the app is super nice, and it is convenient with all the reasons, but moving to app exclusivity for paying for parking, I would vote against that. I would never, like, I just can’t. Yeah. I would say that a $1.50 for parking, I think, is fair. And in terms of what we’ve got restaurant-wise, and if we’re being honest, talking clientele and who’s coming in, like, with the exception of maybe like Two South Brunch House and some of that, like, I mean, if you’re going to eat dinner at Rudy’s or the Fed, you can afford $1.50 an hour parking, because the meal itself right there. And I’m just saying, when I see a Maserati in the free parking, you know, like, that just kind of makes me – Forte said that’s why he has a Maserati. Jones said yeah, that’s why he has a Maserati, but that’s also why I think that they can afford $1.50, because we got to think about, you know, we’re right now getting us up to our 2018 rate, but also if we’ve got to replace those future kiosks, we’ve got to have the money for that too. So, we know the roads have got to get money, but now you’re talking about we’ve got to replace kiosks. So, I think a $1.50 is fair.

(To Quisenberry), Wylie said did you want to say something? Quisenberry said no, go ahead.

Quisenberry said I think a $1.50 will kind of give us some room to grow into what we’ll need, rather than just catch up right now. (To Forte), said and also, the research you did on the amount, was it those cities, did they also, were the hours all day long too, night and day? That’s what I was thinking. Rochester, there, you go there, you pay, whether it’s at 9:00 in the morning or 5:00. Forte said almost all of them have Sunday free, though. Quisenberry said yeah, Sunday free, holiday free. But I think that my thought is a $1.50, and also extend the hours.

Wylie recognized Forte for a comment.

Forte said yeah, I would actually agree like with multiple people, but like I would rather do $1.50 if we extend the hours. And so, it’s kind of equal across all the businesses, because I do agree with the restaurants. And I do think the restaurants, like that’s one of the reasons Steven and I live in downtown, is the walking distance to the restaurants was a big thing for us. So, I don’t want it to be just unfair on the restaurants. So that was, I agree with you, when you were saying it’s a bit of a restaurant tax, extending the hours. And I only said $2 because that was the going rate. And it’s easy for cash, too.

Wylie said anybody else on council?

No comments.

Wylie said in the public?

Wylie recognized Cara Catallo for a comment.

Catallo said I would encourage you to go with the $1.25, but I’ve also always been in the mindset of protecting the businesses and not trying to do anything more. In my opinion, because we have so few, we can talk about Rochester or Birmingham, but we’re not exactly equivalent to them. I just looked up, Fenton actually doesn’t have paid parking, so I’m not sure about that. Forte said Fenton does. Catallo said well, I just talked to somebody from Fenton, I was texting her, and she said, maybe Fenton, Missouri, but they don’t. But it’s just, Ortonville doesn’t, neighboring communities don’t, and I just would hate to just sort of keep riding on the backs of our businesses. And I just think that 25 cents or going up more incrementally makes greater sense. And I also think that if you’re going to change the hours, even if you talk about it at the next meeting, don’t order the signs until you know all the information. Quisenberry said yeah.

Wylie recognized Rodgers for a comment.

Rodgers said yeah, I, you know, this is always a hard one, because nobody wants to raise money or prices on anybody right now. And so, what you and, what Avery and Catallo are saying is correct, like, you know, who wants to go above, we didn’t even really want to do a dollar, let’s face it. But on the other hand, last week we were talking about how we have to start getting money into the city. We can’t keep giving without taking a little bit. So actually, the people that come into our city and use our city roads and our city sidewalks will be the ones that will help pay for all of those things. And so, I guess I’m more inclined to go with the $1.50 because of that. Like, I just think that we are starting to, money is starting to bleed out of us, and we have to figure out some way, and and if it’s 25 cents more to park or 50 cents more to park, you know, that’s kind of what we have to do. At least I – (interrupting Rodgers), Jones said you just approved a contract over $665.We literally just approved a quote over a difference of $665. I mean, money is – Rodgers said it’s really important. So that’s just my, I hear what you two are saying and my heart says yes, but my mind is saying that we, after listening to the last three or four council meetings, the last four or five years of council meetings, we tend to err more on the giving. And I think for just this little bit of time period, we need to start pulling in.

Wylie said comments or questions from anybody else?

No comments.

Wylie said OK, I do need a resolution. And when you state your resolution, please include the dollar per hour amount.

Avery said well, my suggestion would be, let’s just do a voice vote on the $1.25 or $1.50. Once we have the number agreed to, then you can just do the resolution as is.

Wylie said mine’s $1.25.

Forte said I’m $1.50.

Avery said I’m $1.25.

Rodgers said $1.50.

Quisenberry said $1.50.

Jones said $1.50.

Wylie said who wants to make a resolution? It’s $1.50.

Forte said I’ll make a resolution for $1.50. Wylie said so OK, that makes it from $1 per hour to $1.50 per hour as soon as possible. Second Quisenberry.

Forte said but I really pushed to change hours. I know. Wylie said so, we’re gonna get it on the agenda. It’s next, can we do – Smith said we can do that at the next meeting. That’s pretty much all in the can. Wylie said yeah, that’s OK. Forte said said thank you.

Wylie said any other discussion then on this resolution?

No comments.

(To Guillen), Wylie said could you do a roll call, please?

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

Wylie said and the resolution is adopted. Thank you, everybody.

Agenda Item #11, Public Hearing: 2026/2027 Fiscal Year Budget Proposal (video time mark 0:38:45):

Wylie said Item #11 is public hearing for the 2026-2027 fiscal year budget proposal. And first thing we have to do, first thing I have to do, is open the meeting.

• • Open the Public Hearing

Wylie said meeting is open to the public and we’re complying with Open Meetings Act. And the meeting is opening at 7:39.

• • Call to Order

Wylie said calling the meeting to order at 7:39.

• • Presentation of the 2026/2027 Fiscal Year Budget Proposal:

• • • 2026/2027 Fiscal Year Budget (page 46/63 of the council packet)

Wylie said so, the presentation, I guess, is gonna be between Smith, City Manager Jonathan Smith and City Treasurer Greg Coté.

(To Coté), Smith said I think I can do all this from the podium? Coté said yeah, I’ll just grab your desk.

Jonathan Smith:

OK, I guess I want to first start off by thanking the finance committee because this has been a long effort. It really started back in October. We really just got into some of the numbers for the new budget year more recently, but we have been struggling to find financial solutions for the city. It’s not been taken lightly. We’re really putting a lot of effort into this year’s budget. Started in October and I’m just really finishing last week.

So, we’ll start with an executive summary. These numbers might be a little bit small on the screen here, but we have copies on here in the packet. So, I’d like to start with an executive overview, kind of showing year over year some of the changes.

So, what this slide is showing you is in the blue bar is our revenue. So, our revenue is down slightly and we’ll, we’ll see details on all of these, so don’t get too worried if I’m skipping over things on this executive summary. But income is down slightly, $26,000 to the exact. But revenue, I’m sorry, expenses on the other hand are up significantly, and there’s several as shown in the orange bars and the orange print.

Police and fire expenses that are up 7-1⁄2% are $28,500. Election expenses, this is a one-time expense on election, so that’s very unusual that that would be up that much, but we have $15,000 in the budget for election-related equipment. We’ll go into all of these. Health insurance up 15%. DTE street lighting up seven, liability insurance up 2-1⁄2[%], and administrative salaries were up 1.9%.

So, the proposed actions, and here again, we’ll get into these on subsequent slides. First of all, we’re utilizing for this fiscal year, this ’26-‘27 fiscal year that we’re talking about tonight, the focus is that we would use our fund balance to bridge the gap. We do have a gap, and we’re gonna use the fund balance to bridge that gap. There’s sufficient funds in the fund balance to do that. Going forward though, we need something, a bigger solution, and the thought is a separate police and fire village. That’s something that so many other municipalities are looking at or implementing, is police and fire, or public safety villages. It’s very widespread, and it’s very commonly accepted amongst most residents. This is something we need to have. We’ll talk a little further about that, but it’s really not the focus. Tonight’s focus is really about the ’26-‘27 budget, and the millage would be more ‘27-‘28.

We already talked about parking fees, and we’ll talk more about that, and then there’s some other revenue opportunities that we can look at, that the finance committee can look at.

So, on the next slide, I’d like to talk about the budget principles and goals, and I think it’s important that people know, for transparency’s sake, kind of the things that we went through in our focus. So first of all, the city finance committee made up of Mayor Sue Wylie, council members Al Avery, Ted Quisenberry, treasurer Greg Coté, and myself. The committee has been meeting since October. There are some opportunities that we can get into those. If you wish, some of the other things that the finance committee looked at, there’s a whole list, two-page list of opportunities. More recently, the committee has been reviewing and proposing this year’s budget with a goal of, as it says in the charter, protect the health, safety, and welfare of our residents, maintaining a high level of public service, and addressing infrastructure needs, ensuring fiscal stability, transparency, data-driven and vetted decision-making. All of that is the key to the finance committee.

[Clarkston Sunshine note: though our “transparent” finance committee holds open meetings that the public can attend, it deliberately chooses to meet during the day when most people are at work, refuses to publish recordings of its meetings, and it does not publish minutes.]

I’m sure it is to all of you as well, that those are things that we continue. Starting this year, the committee extended the forecast horizon from one year to three years, just to give us better visibility of what might be coming down the road. A lot of municipalities are starting to go out further, and I think it did help us this year to have that visibility.

And then lastly, many of the line items are based on historical trending. That’s always the best indicator of what’s coming, it’s what’s happened in the past. Unless we know of some other change that’s gonna make that not be the case, but more often than not, what’s happened in the past will repeat itself.

[Clarkston Sunshine note: This rejects zero-based budgeting. It assumes the city will continue to spend whatever it spent in the past (plus an increase each year). It does not look at reducing expenses. It does not look into the justification for past spending levels but assumes they will be carried forward. Zero-based budgeting eliminates that assumption and asks whether each specific line item is necessary and the amount is justified.]

OK, so let’s look at this introductory slide about revenue and expenses. This is a key visual over the history in the past. 2020, there was a bit of a blip there, a large blip, actually, because that’s where we built this building expansion. That was, we brought in revenue from the water fund, and so the revenue went up, and we had, obviously, a lot of expenses related to the construction, but that was the big thing in there in 2020, and it flowed over a little bit to 2021. In 2025, our revenue went up because – (to Coté), tell me how to get here again. So, there were two things in 2025.

Coté said yeah, we got the police and fire reimbursement from the township, and the Clarkston Dam project, if you recall. Yes, so we got a grant for the dam, and then we got money in and money out, so both income and revenue went up, our income and expenses went up in 2025.

[Clarkston Sunshine note: The revenue from reimbursement for police and fire from the township was for six of the fourteen years our city employees negligently overpaid the bills. If it weren’t for my husband, the city employees would still be overpaying for these services. No one was disciplined for the overpayment, and some council members even rushed to defend city employees for negligently paying police and fire invoices without reading the contract or asking for backup for the invoices before issuing payments.]

But I think more alarming to me is the blue bars because you’ve been seeing the revenue with a nice, steady incline. If you draw a curve, you see those lines going up, but when you start to look out the future, you see a flatter line, and in fact, when I went to the U of M presentation to Oakland County, the words they used were a just more kind of level, even keel change. They don’t, moderate was the word they used, moderate growth, not the big kind of historical growth that we’ve seen in recent years.

But at the same time, expenses continue to rise. Employee demands for increases, whether it’s here in the city or Detroit Edison or Consumer’s Power or wherever it may be, whoever our suppliers are, they’re all experiencing the same thing, is employee costs, human capital costs are rising, and no one can really stop it. If you want qualified employees, you have to pay the bill. So, all of our suppliers, whether it’s Detroit Edison or Office Depot, they’re all experiencing that.

[Clarkston Sunshine note: Your city government raised your taxes by .691 mills last year using a loophole that allowed it to avoid the opportunity for you to vote on it and it broke a city council promise not to double tax us (referred to as “the library millage rollback”). Even this wasn’t enough to pay for the salary increases that went primarily to Smith, Coté, and Guillen. Police and fire expenses are paid from our general fund now. Smith wants you to pay separately for police and fire services with no dollar-for-dollar reduction in the amount of tax you pay now. If you vote yes, this will free up the general funds previously used for police and fire services so they can be used for Smith’s pet projects, such as spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to rip out all the downtown sidewalks. Smith has never looked at whether it’s less expensive to contract with a different local community for police and fire services and he would have even less of an incentive to do it if the entire burden was shifted to taxpayers through a special police and fire millage.]

So, what you see is revenue kind of flattening off, but expenses rising. So, you start to see these two diverge. It’s kind of alarming trend that you might say, boy, are we headed towards a recession? Well, I guess that’s possible, but we’re not seeing that, we’re not even suggesting that at this point, we’re not using the R word. So, but it is kind of a little scary that expenses are rising faster than revenue. We’re gonna dig into some of these trends that we’ve seen here.

I think I’ve touched on all the observations here, which is a lot.

I guess I will touch on the one, home value improvements. In recent years, what’s been saving us is that home values and therefore taxable values have been steadily increasing. That’s good for you as a homeowner, but it’s good also for the city because our taxable goes up as well. And that we’re starting to see slow down. Our new assessor is seeing a slowdown on those trends. They just don’t think they’ll continue like they have been in recent years. Yes, if somebody sells their house, the reset, the pop-up they call it, that will continue, although there’s actually a bill in front of the house right now to stop the pop-up as they call it. So, when a house sells and the home value goes from, you know, grandma’s had a nice low rate for 40 years, when she sells to the new couple that come in and buy the house, there’s that pop-up. And there’s a house bill right now on the floor that would eliminate the pop-up. So, the new buyers would get the same low rate that grandma’s had for the last 40 years. Still not, we’ve talked about it in the finance committee. I don’t know how the logistics of that works, but that is something that the house is considering.

[Clarkston Sunshine note: There is also a set of bills to completely eliminate property taxes and replace them with a sales tax on services. Whether any of that will be enacted and how it would affect city income is uncertain. It is impossible to make future income projections except by assuming that the current method of municipal financing will continue as is.]

OK, let’s dig in now a little bit further just to revenue only. We’ll get back to expenses in a second. And what this chart is showing you is similar to the previous chart, but it’s showing you a little breakout between tax revenue and state sharing revenue and other.

So, the tax revenue, the blue bars are definitely increasing, but they’re starting to level off with that moderate economic growth that we’ve been referred to in the future years.

The other key point is that the orange bar in the middle, the state revenue sharing, that is all based on sales tax. So, the city gets money, all municipalities get money from the state, but it’s based on sales tax. So, if spending is slowing down, the state’s getting less tax, sales tax revenue, that’s 6% sales tax, they’re gonna have less money to turn around and give to municipalities. So, the orange bars might start to shrink a little bit. And that means we’ll get less from the state. Coté said you can kind of see that in ‘19 and ‘20, you might say, why is that state revenue sharing kind of compressed? But if you think back, that was due to the pandemic. So, we had less people spending money. Smith said ‘20 and ‘21. Coté  said yeah, ‘19, you can see it ‘20 and ‘21. Yep, absolutely.

Smith said the next slide, I talk about where my tax dollars go. This is a slide I like to include in every budget presentation, because there is this notion that 100% of your tax dollars come to the city, and that is not true. People say, well, geez, I pay $10,000. We’ve had people in our lobby telling us, I paid $10,000 in taxes last year. What did you do with my $10,000? And I say, well, first of all, I didn’t get $10,000. Yes, you paid it to us, but I had to turn around and send out $7,000 of the $10[,000] you sent me. I had to send out $7,000 to other recipients. Only 30% remains in the city. So that’s just kind of a misnomer that I like to take the opportunity to correct.

Then I’d like to talk about the millage rates. What drives millage rates? And if you’re not familiar with the Headlee Act that was adopted, what, it was in 1974 or something. It’s been around for a while. Coté said yep.

Quisenberry said I have a question. I’ll slide back. Smith said but that – Quisenberry said you might be able to help me understand this. As far as the state sharing, it’s all based on sales tax, right? Coté said there’s an algorithm, yes. Quisenberry said OK. Because of the huge increase we’re paying in gasoline right now, is the state tax on a gallon of gasoline remaining the same, whether it’s four and a half dollars a gallon or three dollars a gallon? That’s not based on the percentages. Isn’t it a set number? Coté said I don’t know the detail on that, but the gas tax falls under the Act 51, and that stays within 202, 203 [budgeting accounts]. That stays on the road side. Quisenberry said OK. Coté said this is the statutory constitutional revenue that we get, and this flows directly to 101 [budget account]. Quisenberry said so gas tax isn’t a part of this? Coté said it’s not. Quisenberry said got it. Coté said good question, though.

Smith said so, Headlee Act was the push down that to stop people from being taxed out of their houses. So, it pushes the millage rate down every year. It goes down a little bit every year. So, you see this trend. The orange bars are the Headlee Act maximum allowable millage. For many years, we had a gray bar, which was the difference between the maximum allowable and what we actually charged, and the difference was always the library millage. Last year, we removed the library millage [to give salary increases to Smith, Coté, and Guillen], so now the gray bars and orange bars are the same, and they will continue to be, but that shows still, even if you look at the orange bars, they’re going down every year. So, that just puts more and more pressure on the municipalities to deal with less revenue.

[Clarkston Sunshine note: This is wrong. The millage rollback, in conjunction with increasing property values, give the city the same revenue each year, plus an increase for inflation. Without a rollback, tax revenue would increase with any limit as property values increase. We are taxed at the highest possible rate under our city charter. The Headlee Amendment to the state constitution requires a rollback of our property tax to the millage rate that the voters originally approved plus an amount for inflation established by the state each year. If it were otherwise, you could be taxed out of your home as inflation rises.]

Smith said so, that’s the millage rate, and then the other component of our tax revenue is the taxable value of the homes, and this also has a governor on it. If you will, that it’s capped by Proposal A. Proposal A limits how fast, again, to protect those that are on fixed income and their income is not going up, so we don’t want them to be taxed out of their home by taxes growing. So, Proposal A limits how fast it can grow. It’s 5% or the rate of inflation whichever is less. So, these orange bars, you see, that’s your estimated home values added up citywide. They’re continuing to grow rather nicely. Even this year, 5.8%, that’s a nice bump for all of you homeowners, but the gray bar is what we can charge as taxable value, so it’s capped at 2.9%, so that’s a challenge.

[Clarkston Sunshine note: The value of your home doesn’t matter until it’s time for you to sell it so it’s neither nice nor not nice for you.]

Smith said now, there’s a pop-up that I was just talking about a few minutes ago when anyone sells their house. That can help the 2.9%. It can go higher, but right now, assuming that there are not a lot of home values changing hands or homes changing hands, that’s gonna stay at 2.9%.

So, down at the bottom, you see our taxable value for this year is estimated to be $65 million, and you multiply the millage times that $65 million taxable value, it equates to a tax revenue of $745,000. We’ll see that in a few slides from now. That’s what we anticipate our tax revenue being for next year, $745,000. So, that’s the revenue side of the balance sheet.

Let’s talk about expenses for a minute. Here again, I’ve provided this slide that shows some of the major components that go into our expense total, and police is blue, fire is orange. Gray is wages, office wages, and city wages overall. Yellow is attorney’s fees, and then the blue is other. So, again, back in 2020, we had construction, which we had a lot of low expenses in 2025. We had the Mill Pond Dam expenses, so there were some other things included in there, but generally, they’ve been just continuing to climb. And what we’re seeing, and I mentioned this earlier, personnel costs, whether it’s here in the city or outside the city, DTE, Office Depot, all of those personnel costs are rising. And then supplies and material costs. So, when we just buy copier paper, it’s going up year over year due to inflation, shipping costs, fuel costs, tariffs, all that stuff is driving that up.

Forte said I have a question. Smith said yes. Forte said do you have anything in here that shows like our rate of taxes versus other areas and families around us? I feel like people always say it’s super high in the village. Smith said the millage rate? Coté said I can provide that for you. Smith said it’s not in here, but we can get that for you. So, like what Lake Orion or Milford or something like that, what they’re charging in the millage rates, yes. Coté said it’s all broken up by the state (unintelligible) Oakland County. Yes. Smith said good question. We can get that for you. But it’s not, no, it’s not in this. Forte said yeah, sorry.

Smith said this slide, when we talk about expenses, I want to emphasize how much we’ve done to try to reduce expenses. We can only go so far. We just keep scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing the same numbers and you can only get so much out of it. But these are things that we did this year. So, employer 401k match. We reduced this year from 4% to 3% at $1,700 savings. Administrative assistant, Evelyn [Bihl, deputy clerk/deputy treasurer/administrative assistant], we’re reducing her hours from 16 to 10. That’s a $2,400 reduction. Conference budgets for the treasurer’s been reduced by $1,250. Workman’s comp insurance reduced from $3,000 to $2,000. That wasn’t because we were cutting back our coverage on workman’s comp, we really can’t do that. But because we have a good stellar rating on our history with workman’s comp, we haven’t had hardly any claims. Our rate is going down, so that’s good news. Engineering and planning fees, we’ve reduced that $2,500 to try to save some money there. Things we’ll just have to do more in-house. The planning commission is doing a master plan update, all largely in-house. So that’s reflective of that. Dues and conferences, primarily dues have been reduced from $3,000 to $2,000. Nine days of early voting, so this year we’re gonna do that in-house, rather than partner with Independence Township and Oakland County like we did last year at Bay Court. If you went to the early voting at Bay Court, you know that. This year, that was a pretty big expense to do that. We can do that, we’re such a small community, we can do this in-house, have the in-house early voting right here in the conference room, and save about $3,500. Coté said and that was spearheaded by Guillen. That was a great opportunity that she brought to us, and we really jumped on it, so kudos to Guillen. Smith said yep. Outsourced equipment maintenance, about a $900 savings, but things that we can do with Jimi’s [Turner’s, Department of Public Works supervisor] capabilities, we’ll do a little bit more in-house, less outsourced equipment maintenance. And then 18 other various expenses, about $4,000, even $10 to $20 reductions were possible. We really scrubbed everything, we’ve gone over this like a half a dozen times, just where can we cut another $10? In the end, we reduced expenses by $18,000. So, it doesn’t sound like a lot, but we really put a lot of effort into doing that.

[Clarkston Sunshine note: To put the $18,000 in perspective, last year Smith proposed an overall 21% increase to the employee salary budget (almost $45,000), and that didn’t include the cost for giving our part-time employees health insurance and increasing the retirement savings match. Smith threatened to quit if he didn’t receive a $13,000/year increase. Smith now tells us that those new costs have gone up by 15%. If the trajectory continues, it won’t be long before half of our property taxes go to pay employee salaries and benefits.]

Jones said hey, can you refresh me with the dues and conferences budget for city council? What all that encompasses? I apologize, I was jotting some other notes down. I may have missed what you said. Smith said so, dues is the primary component of that budget line item. It’s so, like Michigan Municipal League, we have dues due to them. Coté said periodicals. Smith said periodicals that we might receive. We subscribe to the Oakland Press, for example, that goes in that line item. Conferences are things that if council wanted to go to a conference, if one of you wanted to go, we had some money set aside for that. But that’s what that line item is. In the last few years, we haven’t come close to spending the full $3,000, so we thought we could reduce that to $2,000. Of course, if council recognizes, and this is true of any of these that we’ve cut back arguably too much. If you came to me and said, you said, no, you cut the budget, but here’s this great conference that really is dead on something that we need to know about, I think we should be there. We can always amend the budget, but this is our going in proposal.

Forte said how much do we typically spend on conferences? Smith said all of us, so I go to conferences, Guillen goes to conferences. I think it’s probably in the neighborhood of $4,000, but that’s certainly things we could cut out. We did cut it back, but we didn’t cut it out all together because that’s the way you learn so much about what other municipalities are doing and things that we could do here to save money or to improve our results. Wylie said what was the question? I didn’t hear it. Forte said I just asked how much do you think we spend on conferences. Wylie said oh, how much on conferences, OK. Quisenberry said do you have other line items in the budget for dues and conferences under your respective – (interrupting Quisenberry), Smith said yeah, yes, good point, yes. So, Guillen’s got a line item for conferences. I do in the administrative budget. Coté has one in the treasurer’s budget. That’s the one I referred to up here has been reduced to $250, but yeah. So, there are other line items. Forte said OK, thank you.

Smith said OK, so I’m not gonna read through all these, but these are, this is the actual budget, the 101 budget, and this presentation is all about the 101, the operational budget. So, this is the 101 budget. The second from the left column, I guess third from the left column if you include the description, is the proposed ‘26-‘27 budget. That’s the column we’re focusing on. But over the far right, you see the addition of the next two years. So now we have three years of forecast. So, they’re all on one page here, and it does kind of show you the trend line on some of these things, or maybe it’s a reverse trend line.

So, tax revenue, we see going up. That’s good news. That continues to rise, a little bit slower than it has been, but continues to rise.

A couple other things I wanted to point out here, permit fees. You might see that that dropped from $28,000 to zero. You might say, what happened to permit fees? Well, this is really kind of a one-time adjustment. When we changed from an in-house permitting operation to having Independence Township do our permitting, we used to get all the permit fees in as revenue. That’s what that $28 grand was. We’d get it all in, and then we had to turn around and pay the inspectors. So, it was an in and out. Now we don’t have, we do the out, but it’s all through the township. We don’t have that in. So, it’s really just kind of the optics, the fact that we don’t have the revenue. We didn’t have it really before, because we turned around and sent it out as a line item in our expense budget, but now we just don’t have the revenue. So, it looks like really bad news. Like, permits have dried up to nothing, but that’s really not the case. It’s just more of an accounting adjustment one time.

Rodgers said I don’t understand that. Like, so, like I understand that in the space, $28,000, so what we get from permits, everything we get from permits, we used to pay the permit guy? Smith said yes, pretty much. It was – (interrupting Smith), Rodgers said so we’re not making any money on permits. Smith said we weren’t making any money, and by charter, we’re not supposed to make money. Rodgers said OK. Smith said the building operations, it’s not intended to be a money-making, a profit-making center. You’re supposed to just break even. Everything you bring in should turn around and spend out. If you’re bringing in more, you should, next year, you should cut your permit fees, is the concept. Avery said right, it’s on both ends, though, right? So, it shows up there as a minus $28[,000], that we’re $28,000 less in revenue. So, it’s not there this year. We’re not expending it either, so it’s a zero wash. Rodgers said I got it. I got it. I just didn’t realize we could –

(To Cara Catallo), Wylie said on this topic? OK, go ahead. Catallo wants to ask something.

Catallo said well, but I mean, like, we need to remember we’re paying the township for those services, so there’s that $30,000, so I just, you know, we do full transparency, and then they’re keeping the permit money. Coté said but they’re also paying off for the expenditures. Catallo said right, theoretically, right. Wylie said they also can’t make a profit from it, either. Coté said right. Catallo said well, theoretically. Rodgers said thank you.

Smith said a couple other line items that I’ll point out here. State revenue, about the middle of the page there. State revenue, sales tax revenue. You see that kind of slowly declining over the next three years, but that is all based on current spending levels. We hope that expenses, or I’m sure I should say, we hope that the sales tax revenue kind of holds the way it has been, because if that takes a dive, then the state will reduce our revenue sharing. But right now, there’s no indication that that’s happening, so we’re staying with a relatively flat forecast on state revenue sharing.

The rest of it is pretty straightforward. I don’t think a huge change.

Forte said what’s the banner revenues? Smith said I’m sorry, what’s the what? Forte said the banner. Smith said back in the days, that’s kind of a carryover from the past. We used to put banners across Main Street, the big ones, not on the light posts, but the big ones. That’s what we charged for that, and that’s a line item. I don’t know why there’s $50 in there, but we did talk, Catallo’s mentioned a proposal, a plan, whereby we actually charge on the light posts I’m talking about now, not across Main Street. Coté said doesn’t one of the restaurants put up a banner? Did they pay more, I thought, than one time? Smith said well, yes, there was an event, but that was kind of a long time, but anyways, there was a proposal that we might charge for banners on our light posts, so as a revenue-making opportunity. I’m not opposed to that at all. I think that’s a great idea, so that might result in some banner revenues, and so we’ll leave that line item there. Forte said thank you.

Wylie said OK, I have a question. Why are you anticipating a downturn in gazebo rentals? It says current trend line. Smith said right. They have been kind of softening. There’s just not as many people stepping up. Coté said that’s my projection, that this doesn’t seem to be as robust. Wylie said all right, that’s historical. Coté said people have less discretionary income – Wylie said oh, OK – (continuing), Coté said so in order to err on the conservative side, I just kind of scaled it back a little. Wylie said OK, I was just curious. Coté said that’s the thought. Wylie said OK, thanks. Coté said hopefully, we’ll go above and beyond that $35[00]. That would be an added blessing. Smith said if people ask the question, we’re not gonna not tell them this. It’s public information. They ask the question, OK, if I reserve the gazebo, and it’s $250, what if I just walk up to the gazebo, and nobody’s using it, and I just walk up and use it? What’s the fee then? Well, there’s no fee. You can always walk up. The benefit of paying the rental fee is it’s guaranteed for you and only you for that two-hour window, or four-hour window, whatever it is. That’s the benefit of paying. If you wanna take your chances and just walk up, then it’s free. But if somebody’s already in there having a birthday party, you’re out of luck. You’re out of luck.

Wylie said Forte has a question.

Forte said yes, on that topic, did we ever do a fee study for the price of the park? Smith said we have. I know that was, you brought it up earlier, is something, could we review all those fees? We didn’t see a lot of revenue opportunity in those fees, what other municipalities are charging, but we did do a study on what other communities were charging for park fees, and the gazebo rentals being one of the big ones. Forte said OK, thank you. Smith said so, wasn’t a lot of money there. Forte said OK.

Smith said OK, so that’s the revenue slide.

Let’s go on to the expense slide, which is the next page. There’s 12. Here, so again, I won’t go through all of these, but I’ll touch on some of the bigger ones. These are expenses.

We reduced council a little bit, that’s that dues and conferences going down $1,000.

Administration, all the salaries, you’ll see that a little bit. All the staff salaries and DPW salaries went up a flat 3%, so you see some of that on some of these line items.

Elections, that’s a big one. That’s that $15,000 in equipment that the state of Michigan tells us we are going to need. Now, we’re optimistic that the state is gonna cover some of that cost and not put it all on the municipality, so we’re hopeful. I’ve heard from the Michigan Municipal League that they anticipate the state covering half of that $15,000, so if they do, that’s $7,500 back in our pocket, or not needed in their budget, so that’s good news.

Let’s see, what else? Police and fire, those are big ones, 7.5% increases. What’s even a little more concerning, if you look at the ‘25-‘26 column, the leftmost column, that’s our current budget year, so police, for example, is $178,667, and you go over to the far right, where we have ‘28-‘29, so in that three-year growth, it goes up $50,000, from $178[,000] to $227[,000], and fire also goes up, actually goes up $55,000 in three years’ time. This is just more justification for a public safety millage. It’s just the cost of police and fire are not knocking any policeman apart, and believe me, we understand it. There are expenses, there’s wages, there are equipment costs, everything is just skyrocketing, but we don’t wanna risk having good police and fire services on quick notice. We don’t wanna be waiting long periods of time, but the costs are just continuing to rise, and the way it is right now, it’s police and fire is part of our operational budget. If we do a separate millage for police and fire, it’s a budget of its own, and so police and fire goes up. Yes, it’s something that the residents would have to pay for, but it’s something that I think all the residents recognize is needed.

Forte said so, that’s a one-time? Smith said they’re usually three-year terms of the agreement, so they have to be renewed. The millages have to be renewed probably every three years. So, we’re working on that right now. I’m gonna work with Fisher to help get all the words in place. You have to have certain deadlines to get up to the November election, so we don’t have a lot of time, but we are still in good shape. Forte said do we look at that after you guys write it? Smith said absolutely. Forte said OK. Smith said absolutely. Smith said so, that police and fire is a big line item change year over year that is included right now, and it’s included in our operational budget.

Forte said for the attorney fee, like I know we just got a big bill for that, so was that $30,000 discussed before or after that bill? Smith said so – (interrupting Smith), Coté said we were anticipating that, and I still think we can make it work at a $30,000 annual bill. Forte said OK, thank you. Coté said we had some outliers there that really skewed the number this year, but I’m confident that we can keep it within $30,000. Smith said if we were, for some reason, to get into some kind of legal court case, all bets are off. Coté said yeah. Smith said but, barring that, the trend lines from the past, we think we can stay within the $30,000. Things like Fisher not being here tonight, I need to be discretionary. When do I call Fisher? When do I say, I really want you at this meeting because we’re gonna get into some legal-related topics? I need to be more discretionary about that. Forte said is it a set fee for meetings, or is it based on how long you’re here? Smith said how long, how long. It’s by the hour. Forte said yeah, sorry. Smith said no, good question.

Smith said so, some of these expenses I talked about previously when I talked about expense reductions, so I’m not gonna go into any further detail unless you have any questions, but what this shows at the bottom is that we’re estimating a $50,000 shortfall year over year in this year’s budget.

So, our revenue is gonna fall short of our expenses by $50,000. As I mentioned earlier, we can accommodate that in our fund balance, which is basically our checking account balance, right? That’s something that we can accommodate this year, but if you look to the right, out in ’27-‘28, ’28-‘29, and that red number gets bigger and bigger. And at some point, we can’t just absorb that in our fund balance. It’s just not gonna be enough. And we’re gonna see in a minute, a slide that talks about our fund balance.

(To Smith), Rodgers said one thing that I negated on the previous page, for the holiday market, we don’t have $1,000 in revenue from that market. Smith  said we don’t have $1,000 in – Rodgers said it’s not a moneymaker. Wylie said It passes through. It passes through us. Rodgers said it’s gonna pass us through. Wylie said it’s through our treasury. It does. Rodgers said I just wanna make it clear to people that donate, they donate for that. So it’s in our- Smith said yes. Rodgers said it’s in there, but it’s used only for that. Coté said correct. Smith said absolutely correct. Rodgers said right? Smith said absolutely right. Yep. We can help make that very clear that that’s not revenue that goes towards – Rodgers said roads. Smith said roads. Rodgers said right. Smith said anything. Office salaries or anything. Yep. Rodgers said cool, thanks. Smith said yep. Good catch.

Smith said OK. Now let’s talk about our capital improvement plan. So, this is looking for capital improvements, big expenses going out for the next five years. This is a key component, key requirement of your budget. So, what this is showing is our tree planting, signposts, crosswalk painting, all of those kind of infrastructure improvements that we like to make in the city.

This has been color-coded, as it’s been done in the past, showing, in my opinion, what is urgent, important, or desirable. The urgent, being in red, shows you two line items, resurfacing of roads, and rejuvenation of our sanitary drain pipes. Those are the two red items that I think are urgent that we have to include, we really can’t walk away from.

There are other things in here, though, like, where is it in here? (To Avery), Smith said I know we were talking about it earlier when you asked about our parking kiosks, there is number 12. So, we don’t have a huge expense right now, but next year, I’m expecting we have $10,000 needed to replace our kiosk.

Resurfacing of parking lots, I think we talked about that as well. We have zero this year, we’re gonna sealcoat, we were approved tonight, Lower Peninsula, we’re gonna do our sealcoating, so we’ll do that this year, and possibly the next year if needed be, but when we get to ’28-‘29, I don’t know if we can just keep putting lipstick on the pig, we might have to bite the bullet and actually resurface that parking lot. So, I’ve got $85,000 in the Washington lot in ’28-‘29, and then you get out to 2030, and that’s the Depot lot, a bigger lot, I’m estimating that to be under $20,000 to resurface that.

So, this gives you a sense of what’s coming in the future, not to say some of these couldn’t slide around, not to say that some of these won’t even stick. We just don’t have the money, some of them might drop off the list, but it’s an indicator of where we see things going at this five minutes. The further out you go, obviously the little grayer it gets, but if you drop to the bottom of the ’26-’27, our current proposed budget, that’s $391,000. Most of that’s the two red items.

Now we’ll go on to the next slide, because I’m gonna show you where that $391,000 is.

(To Smith), Coté said before you leave, I think a nice point to bring out is look at the parking kiosk, if you guys would be so kind. Back in 2018, correct me if I’m wrong, that parking kiosk was about $6,000, wasn’t it? Smith said right. Coté said now you fast forward to now, it’s $10,000. That’s the impact of inflation, and it’s very tangible right there. It’s incredible, just for a loop machine. Is it a loop machine? Is that what they call it? Smith said loop, yeah. Yep.

Quisenberry said as far as number eight, you have that list that is desirable, but just upon your manager’s report today with our server, how can that be down as a zero right now, and as a desirable? It seems to me that’s gotta be an urgent. Smith said that will be urgent, but that’s gonna happen this budget year we’re in right now. So, it’s probably, it’s gonna result in a possible overrun of our existing budget, but it’s not $6,000. The server is basically just a computer frame with a little bit more memory in it, and we think we can get one of those for about $1,500. Quisenberry said OK.

Smith said OK, so the $391,000, let’s go on to the next slide. I’m gonna show you where the funding for that $391,000.

So, across the top, you see fund balance, parking fund, sewer fund, water fund, and local road fund. Those are the various funds at our disposal. Fund balance, the first column, $311,000 is our current fund balance, approximately. But the good news is we’re only anticipating about $16,000 coming out of the fund balance. The big ticket items, those red bars that we saw on the previous slide, roads and sewer, drainpipe rejuvenation, they’ve got other funds to come out of. So, roads is gonna be split between the parking fund and the local road fund. The monies are already sitting in the bank account today to cover all of that proposed work, which is East Church and the engineering and design work of Miller Road. That’s what’s gonna happen this year. I’m a little less optimistic that we’re actually gonna get into paving of Miller Road this year, but I am committing to completely repaving and start to finish of East Church Street and then designing and engineering the solution for Miller Road. And then next year, the following year, we’ll repave it. So, but the good news is none of that $240,000 for road resurfacing is gonna come out of the fund balance. And that’s the way I think we wanna keep it.

We wanna get into, we talked about raising parking revenue. That’s what’s gonna allow us to really focus on infrastructure because parking, as you remember, pays for parking lots, roads and sidewalks. Primarily our big infrastructure. Doesn’t cover sewer pipes, but it does cover parking, roads, and sidewalks. And that is really helpful, that I don’t have to wait until there’s a little bit extra money in our operational fund to fund something like that. It’s just, would just be impossible without parking to really do much road work. We just never get to the point where we have enough money. So, this is really helpful. What this is showing is roads, the $240,000 for East Church and Miller will come out of the parking fund and the local road fund without a dime coming out of the fund balance.

Forte said whatever happened, remember when Miller was being used a lot? You said like, oh, we’re talking to the state to see if they can help us when we do make those repairs. Smith said yep, and kind of as expected, they just said no. Forte said shocking. Smith said yeah. Coté said resounding no. Smith said so, just a resounding no. So that’s the, you go on your knees to MDOT [Michigan Department of Transportation] but they always have that (unintelligible) just saying, sorry, no, we don’t have funds for that. Forte said OK, thank you. Unfortunate. Smith said asked. We did ask.

Sewer drainpipe or sanitary drainpipe rejuvenations. Remember the camera inspections of all of our sewer pipes. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? That work was done last year, and it identified fives, fours, threes, twos, and ones. So, we wanna get all the fives and then some of the borderline fours, get all that done, $135,000 will do that. It’s my proposal that we do that to show that we are staying up, not just for show but actually to maintain those pipes. We don’t want them to break. What happens in rejuvenation, if you’re not familiar with it, is they go down robotically, no digging at all which is the real beauty of it. Robotic goes down the sewer pipe, even the smaller eight inch pipes, they go up to 24 inch. But even a smaller eight-inch pipe, they go down on their way down, they are power washing as they go down. And then as they come back, they switch gears and now they’re spraying like a rubberized material on the inside of the pipe. And so, when they come back out to the nearest manhole cover, they have done that whole stretch. And it’s so strong that they tell me that even if the pipe surrounding it, this rubberized spray on, if it completely decayed, which isn’t gonna happen, but if it did, the rubber by itself would continue to hold things together and the water could flow through it. So, it’s really a long-term solution and worth the money, is my point. So, we have to stay up on our sewer pipes, right? We don’t have the ability to flush our toilets and what have we got? So, I’m sorry, but we have to.

Avery said well, and to that end, I think we’ll discuss it in future meetings, but we’re gonna have to look at raising the sewer rate so that we can build the fund back up because we gotta be ready to maintain these pipes. Smith said yes. Avery said and right now you can see our fund is low. $60,000 is not enough to cover it all. We’re going into the water fund to pay for the sewer maintenance. That shouldn’t be that way, I don’t think. (To Avery), Smith said no, that’s a good point. That’s dead on accurate, yes. We do have to look at that.

[Clarkston Sunshine note: We have a shortfall in our water and sewer funds because your city council raided the funds to pay for a brand new city hall, and DPW expansion, which included building a private office for Smith – despite a sign and petition campaign from the residents objecting to the project. The city spent around $400,000 to do this, even though it would have cost approximately $48,000 to repair what we had. Our city government is not a good steward of your money.]

Forte said so, would that be a special assessment or what would that be? Smith said it’s not a special assessment. Coté said it’d just be a general increase to the quarterly charge. Smith said we didn’t wanna do that right now because we have a special assessment in place right now that we’re still paying off. So, we’d like to get that all paid off. We have, what, three more quarters? Coté said four more. Smith said four more quarters of an additional amount that’s raising your sewer bill right now. But once we get past that, get that all paid off, then we’d want to entertain that increase. Not as much as the special assessment is now with some level of increase.

Quisenberry said I don’t, I think it would not be smart to increase that while we’re working on the public safety thing. Avery said yeah, right. Two different issues. Quisenberry said yeah, honestly. Two different, but we don’t wanna, there’s two dings on you, so at the same time. Avery said well, I understand, but the reality is is that we need to have our pipes maintained for a couple of reasons. One is just common sense. We don’t want it to pay like we had to pay for the West Alley when it all came crashing down. Number two, the Independence Township requires us to maintain our pipes, and I don’t wanna give them any fodder for trying to break the contract saying that we’re not properly maintaining the pipes.

(To Smith), Pardee said can you remind me what the water fund is intended to do? Smith said that’s for a catastrophic water collapse. So, we don’t see that happening. All of our pipes, they’re not lead pipes. They’re all in good shape, they’re all copper. So, we don’t see that happening and that’s why we’re confident in borrowing from the water fund to help the sewer fund shortage. Pardee said how does the water fund get funded? Smith said same way. There is a little bit extra on water bills and then if there is somebody that is not on water service today, they’re still on a well and they choose, their well dies and they choose to go to city water, we get like 90%. Coté said yeah, there’s a connection fee. Smith said connection fee and we get the vast majority of that. Township gets the other 10[%]. Smith said so, that’s how the water fund gets built. Pardee said the water fund going to $9,000, to me, is a big risk. Smith said yeah, but again, it comes back to is that really going, is that really a risk if all of our pipes are copper? They’re not leaded pipes like you saw in Flint and other places, so we don’t really see it as a high risk. Pardee said was there water fund expense occurred during your tenure or previous? Smith said in my ten years, no, in my tenure, my ten years, no, we haven’t spent a dime out of the water fund for any kind of repairs. Pardee sad so, $94,000 is like more than ten years of accumulation? Coté said yeah. Smith said yeah, I couldn’t tell you exactly when I came in or not, but yeah.

Avery said but we also get money put in there every year because didn’t we borrow from the water fund to pay for the building? Smith said correct, yes. Avery said so, we’re paying – Smith said we’re paying ourselves back. Avery said yeah, so that will increase – Smith said the water fund back. Avery said that will increase. (To Avery), Smith said good point. So, that’s true that as we pay off our loan every year, it’s a 15 year amortization, right Coté, for this building? When we pay that back, we’re just paying ourselves back and that goes back into the water fund. So, it will grow just on our annual payments back to ourselves.

Forte said do we know how many people are on well versus city? Smith said I don’t have any of those numbers. Dave McKee, the township, probably knows, but I don’t know. I’m always surprised at how many people are still on wells. Forte said I am. Avery said yeah, we switched over about a year and a half ago. Smith said it’s mandatory that you’ve flipped over. At some certain point, you had to flip over the city sewer. You couldn’t stay in the septic, but there’s never been any kind of mandatory action that you go off of your well. As long as it’s working. Wylie said I’m not 100% sure, but I think state law says that if you need to drill, if your well goes bad, it dries up, you need to drill a new well and you have city water service, you have to hook up to city water. Does that sound familiar to anybody? Smith said I’ve seen that, but Dave McKee at one point told me that you don’t have to. Wylie said they don’t have to, OK. Smith said but at the same time, he said, but the state requirements, the health board, Oakland County Health Board that manages the wells, they have gotten a lot more restrictive about, and they might, you know, you used to be able to go down 90 feet and hit water. Anywhere in Clarkston, go down 90 feet, hit water. But is that the water table you want in the end? Now they’re saying you have to go down 200 feet. So that per foot cost goes up and it might be more profitable. Avery said reasonable. Smith said reasonable to go with city water. Wylie said OK. Community well.

Smith said all right, let’s take a quick look at the fund balance.

So, this is our current year, ’25-‘26, our current year we’re in right now. As of July 1 of last year, our fund balance was $311,000. We’ve seen that number earlier today. The, adding the revenue, subtract the expenditures, showing our expenditures are higher than revenue by $24,000. So, our fund balance estimated as of June 30, at the end of next month, will be $286,000, almost a 30% fund balance coverage. As you’ll remember, we have to be above 16.6[%]. 29.8[%] is a nice comfortable level above that.

Now I take that $286,000 as of June 30th, that becomes our July one starting point for the new budget. Once again, I add revenues, subtract expenditures, but I’ve also subtracted the 401 fund balance of $16,000 fund balance expenses. So that shows us ending, going down the fund balance by $65,000 in the next fiscal year.

Remember I said we would go down $50,000. I showed that on our expense slide. But $50,000 plus the $16[,000] to cover the 401 expenses, that’s what gets us to $65,000.

So, the end fund balance we’re projecting as of June 30th of next year, would be $221,000 or 22.8% coverage, still comfortably above the 16.6[%] minimum requirement. So that’s the fund balance.

And then lastly, the last slide is the salaries. I’d like to include this. This is something that’s required by the State of Michigan Appropriations Act. So, what this shows in green is the current salaries. And then in blue is the new salaries. Everything went up by 3%. I mentioned that earlier. You say, well, where did you get 3%? Well, I queried other municipal, well, not just municipal, but private business pay increases or salary studies. And here’s what I found. Payscale, Mercer, Gallagher, World of Work, WTW, all of those are sources of salary, year-over-year changes. And what they’re saying for 2026 is consistently above 3%, 3.5%, 3.6% is the highest. So, I chose 3% as a competitive number for our staff. I did 3% across the board. The only reduction that we see here is that Bihl’s hours were cut from 16 hours to 10 hours. So that resulted in a $2,400 savings. Bottom line at the very bottom, year-over-year salaries were up $4,943 or 1.9%. Overall. So that’s the salary look.

And basically the end of the presentation. If you wanted to see that list of opportunities that the finance committee came up with for – Avery said sources of revenue – Smith said sources of revenue, you can go there if you want to see that. I’ll go there. Sorry, I went too far. I’ll just go back to maximize.

Forte said so, are we updating our fee structure for the park and other things that use DPW to reflect the new increase in their rates? Smith said so, anything that the guys are working on like Concerts in the Park – Forte said yeah – Smith said yes. So, we’ve already negotiated for this year Concerts in the Park going up and they already covered more than 3% increase. But there are other things that we definitely keep that in mind. So, let’s say a bride comes to us, a future bride comes to us and wants to rent a gazebo for a wedding. It’s still $250. So, this goes back to your previous point. Should we be raising that to $280 or $300 to cover Turner’s salary going up? Yes, it’s a good point. So, Concerts in the Park, we have, and that’s one of the biggest consumers of Turner’s time in the summer months. Forte said what about like – (interrupting Forte), Coté said well, Concerts in the Park, though we get a revenue injection from the Chamber to cover their salaries. Smith said yeah. And that’s the one I’m saying was negotiated last year and they included in there, raising, they know their costs are going up or salaries are going up or not.

Forte said what about like Taste of Clarkson and stuff like that? Smith said so, they’re again – Wylie said Taste of Clarkson. (To Forte), Wylie said do you mind speaking a little louder? I can’t hear you. Forte said what about Taste of Clarkson? Smith said so, same way with Taste of Clarkson. We haven’t actually signed the MOU for Taste of Clarkson yet. And the reason for that is, I’ll be blunt here. So, the township gets a share of the profits, not just expenses covered, but a share of the profits. We do not. Forte said what? Smith said so, when I was on the Chamber board last year, I found this out. That they get a, there’s a formula that they get a share of the profits, but the city has only been doing the nice thing and just letting them use our streets. I said to Emily [Interim Director, Clarkston Area Chamber of Commerce], that can’t continue. Either we get a share of the profits like the township does, or you have to stop the share of the profits for the township and we’re on the same page. But however you get there, we have to be on the same page. They pay us a flat fee for Turner’s time and the use of our equipment because we’re using our street sweeper, our trucks. Forte said and you’re always out there helping. Smith said yeah, oh yeah. So, they give us a flat fee that I think comfortably covers all of our expenses. Forte said but is that equivalent to what they make from the township? Wylie said well, that’s gotta be negotiated. Smith said it’s not proportional to what they make, no. But the township does get a proportional amount. Forte said do we know how much that is? Smith said I don’t know the exact formula of it, but they do. They’re making above and beyond expenses. They’re actually making some profit on the event itself. But do you know how much they profit from it? Smith said no.

Coté said yes, I do. Forte said oh, how much? Smith said have you seen the numbers? Coté said yeah, Guillen and I worked the, we worked the money counting for the first time. Forte said the what? Coté said the money counting. Coté said oh, yes, Bihl and, oh, what’s that? Guillen said Bihl, no. Forte said the money counting? What do you mean? Coté said yeah, they came and deposited money here and counted it up and then took it to the bank from this point. Forte said so how much? Coté said they made about $95,000. Smith said that’s the chamber. Coté said chamber, yeah. Smith said we don’t know how much the township. Coté said oh, yeah, I don’t know the township portion. Forte said and they’re making money off of our light posts. What are we doing? Avery said so, they said it was a break even. On the light posts. Jones said yeah, their net, yeah. Do you know what’s going to happen? Yeah, that’s just, that’s not going to happen. (Unintelligible crosstalk.)

Wylie said you know what, honestly, I think this is a discussion for another time. I think that’s kind of. Avery said yeah, let’s keep it on the budget. Wylie said on the budget. Yes, go ahead. And if anybody else, I know we got public comments after we get the council’s questions answered.

Wylie recognized Jones for a comment.

Jones said yeah, so I wanted to go back to, on the efforts to reduce expenses. It says that conferences budget for a treasurer reduced from $1,500 to $250. So, your budget got reduced to $250? OK, so then if we’ve got budgets, I think if we have got line items for travel and budgets for other people, I think we need to see a similar, we should see a similar. Wylie said there’s another reason why Coté doesn’t need, maybe I’m speaking out of turn. Coté doesn’t need to go to all these conferences anymore because you’re up at the highest level. Coté said I’m fine. Wylie said he’s like the god of the treasurers or something. Coté said I’m not. Jones said I’m sorry, I know, but I’m just saying we’re like, I get that, but also I just see that we’re, there’s one person on here that’s getting a decrease in salary year over year, not to mention all of the other budgetary things. And I apologize for getting that level of the weeds, but I’m just saying like, that’s. Forte said wait, what do you mean? Quisenberry said she got a decrease because of her hours. Jones said she’s, oh, well, she’s volunteering. OK, I didn’t, yeah, all right. Forte said that didn’t come up. Smith said you’re right, it is her decrease we’ve talked about several times. Forte said Bihl. Smith said so, she’s doing more traveling. So, I’ve talked to her and it was, you know, it’s OK. Jones said oh, yeah, OK. Well, I mean, but still, I just think that like, you know, if there’s, you know, for a year or so, like if we’re really looking at places to tighten the belt, let’s tighten the belt. That’s just where my thought process is on that.

Wylie said anybody else have council questions or comments for either Smith  or Coté? Quisenberry said she technically got a raise in her hourly rate. Jones said I didn’t realize that. I thought that she, I didn’t realize she was stepping down voluntarily.

• • Public Comments on the Budget Proposal

Wylie said OK, I’m gonna open up the public comments on the budget proposal. Any public comments?

Wylie recognized Catallo for a comment. Catallo said well, mine kind of is a little bit related to what Jones said. I think that the conference budgets, other than, and this is important, Guillen’s because she’s learning new things every time, like because so many things change for a clerk. I think that they should be treated similarly to how the council is. Like, I think that $2,500 for conferences is a lot. I don’t know that Smith said, like that he learns how to save money and improve results, but I don’t, I don’t, not to be offensive, but I don’t really see it. And I feel like the conferences could be treated the same way as the council. If there’s a great conference happening, come in and talk about it and then get it approved or not. But I feel like if we’re this tight on everything, everything needs to be considered. And I think the same thing about the raises, because (to Smith), what, you had a $13,000 raise last year. Like, I think that, again, Guillen does a lot and is potentially doing more. I won’t argue that. I won’t argue with the DPW, but with the staff, I don’t think that just saying that 3% raise across the board is a way to do it. I think that we need to look at everything very carefully from like, you know, I know you don’t want us to talk about the lamppost, but that’s $15,000 that they’re making. Just to be as bananas that we’re like, oh, we can’t afford anything. We have to cut everything. Times are really hard. We need a raise. Like, it’s just really tough because if you’re out there in the real world, it’s not that simple. It’s not like, oh, everybody’s getting raises everywhere. It’s a really tough time. And I think that, again, it’s something that needs to be looked at more carefully and with like a fine-tooth comb. So, to me, the idea of like, I would rather than giving Smith a raise, like let’s give him the comp time equivalent, especially if we’re taking away the conferences. So, there’s like two or three weeks that he will be in house instead of at a conference. Like it just, to me, I think it’s time to look at things really carefully and not just sort of both be walked upon like the Chamber realization, but also just really be careful and diligent about how we’re spending. Because from a Main Street standpoint, I talked to Main Street of Oakland County and I was like, I don’t want any of us to go to a conference. We got nothing out of it in the past. Like, I think it’s a good time to have a moratorium on things like this, even if it’s just for a year and figure things out and then regroup. But I think that it’s worth paying attention to, even if it’s just like, oh, it’s just a grand here, a grand there. I think it’s important. Wylie said you’ve got 30 seconds left, 30 seconds. Catallo said oh, I’ll write a letter. Wylie said all right, thank you.

Wylie said anybody else have, and then you are limited to our usual for three minutes. Anybody else have public comments?

Wylie recognized Guillen for a public comment.

Guillen said so, I am required for continuing, I just wanted to mention that I’m required to take continuing education. I can’t just skip my conferences. So, I did want to mention that, especially during election season, there’s so much training going on right now through November that’s required, or I can’t even administer elections. I’m not allowed to if I don’t come to them.

Jones said and to clarify, I’m not asking that anyone cut required training. I’m talking about like travel outside, like additional travel, just because, I mean, travel costs are going up because fuel costs are going up. So that’s, I’m not saying cut required training. I’m just saying anything that like the, those that could be counted as miscellaneous or extra expenditures. That’s what I’m saying to look at. That’s what I was. Wylie said thank you.

Wylie said anybody else have public comments?

Catallo said I have 30 seconds. Wylie said you’ve got 30 seconds. Catallo said no, I just wanted to point out too, and I don’t know if this is gonna be covered in the next one, but every commission and every committee had their budgets slashed really rather seriously. So to me, it’d be, I’d rather see Smith skip one of the conferences and have the committees have an ability to learn what they’re supposed to be doing. And none of the chairs of those committees were even asked about the budget. Wylie said thank you. Smith said all the committee budgets were based on trending and they were not using their budget this year. So, we cut it for next year.

Wylie said anybody else have public comments?

(To Pardee), Wylie said I know, did you want to? (To Smith), Pardee said well, do you want me to just ask the questions? Or were you going to respond to the questions that I sent earlier today? Smith said well, I can respond to your, or you can ask me, whatever you prefer. Pardee said I’m not gonna do it in three minutes in terms of as a back and forth. Who’s responsible for refreshing crosswalk markings at Washington, Main, and Clarkston Road and North Main? Smith said it depends on what road it’s on. If it’s on Main Street, that’s MDOT. They do it every two to three years, totally outside of our control. Clarkston Road, it’s an Oakland County road that’s maintained by Oakland County. They do that. Can we do it too and waste your money? Yes, but I’d say let’s wait until they paint those roads. So, Washington, Main Street, Clarkston Road, all of those are done by somebody else. My only striping really is on North Holcomb. Pardee said OK. Smith said and Church and Buffalo and those back streets. Pardee said that’s a safety issue for anybody that uses the crosswalks. There’s a road closed ahead sign in front of 218 North Main. Wylie said excuse me, I’m not seeing the relationship to the budget with both the crosswalk markings, the road closed ahead. That’s why I asked you if you wanted to speak during the meeting, during public comments. Pardee said these are all cost items that the city ought to – (interrupting Pardee), Wylie said everything we do is cost items. Pardee said OK, thank you. Wylie said thank you.

Wylie said anybody else have public comments?

Pardee said so, I can make public comments related to this at the next meeting, just to be clarified. Three minutes. Wylie said absolutely. You can talk about anything not on the agenda during public comments. This is a public comments for budget hearing. I asked you when I opened up public comments at the beginning of the meeting, if you wanted to bring up the letter you sent, the email you sent, and you said no, you said it was related to the budget. I didn’t see it, but – Pardee said some of you don’t think it’s, OK. But I can do public comments two weeks from now. Wylie said sure. Pardee said or 13 days. Wylie said sure, as long as it’s not on the agenda.

Wylie said anybody else have public comments?

No comments.

• • Close the Public Hearing

Wylie said OK. Then I need to close the public meeting. The meeting is closed at 8:50. And Item #12 on the agenda is I need a motion to adjourn the meeting.

Quisenberry said wait a second, because Forte and I both had a comment we wanted to make about – Wylie said oh, I’m sorry. Go ahead. OK, then we need to, you’re talking about the budget? Quisenberry said yeah. Wylie said OK. Quisenberry said it was something that came up during it, and –

Wylie said I’m going to reopen the public meeting. So, the meeting is, I guess, how do we do it? Avery said just reopen. Wylie said just say we just reopen it.

Wylie said the meeting is reopened at 8:51.

Quisenberry said there were a couple of numbers that were talked about, and one of them is the line item for what the conferences were. Like, say it was $3,000 for ‘25-‘26. And for ‘26-‘27, it went down to 4,000 or whatever. And do we need to have that at all? Another number that is very important is at the end of the fiscal year, what wasn’t spent? And every one of those line items, and this is kind of something that is important to look at, Coté, you’d have all this. July 1st, we can go down and look at every line item and realize how much we didn’t spend of those. And we’re talking about maybe cutting back on the conferences unwittingly. We may have done that. We may have allocated $5,000. We only spent $12 or something. So, there’s that much left in the budget that we didn’t use that we allocated.

Wylie recognized Forte for a comment.

Forte said yeah, I was just gonna ask regarding the engineering services and the planning services. We’re bidding both of those out, right? Smith said that’s the plan on both, yes. Right now, we’re working on planning services, and I hope to have that at the next council meeting, our planning services competitive bid. But engineering will follow. Forte said and is that like reflected in this budget? I’m sorry. Smith said well, I guess indirectly it is. I mean, we’re assuming no increase – Forte said OK – (continuing), Smith said or even a decrease. Forte said OK. Smith said but in the case of planning, it comes down to hourly, whether it’s Ben Carlisle or some other planner, it’s hourly. So, we would stay within that number. We would just manage to that number. Forte said thank you.

Wylie said does anybody else have public comments?

No comments.

Wylie said OK. The public hearing is closed again at 8:53.

Agenda Item #12, Adjourn Meeting (video time mark 1:53:09):

Wylie said and the motion for Item #12 to adjourn the meeting.

Motion by Rodgers; second Avery.

Wylie said any discussion.

No discussion.

Motion to adjourn passed by unanimous voice vote.

Wylie said the meeting is adjourned at 8:53. Thank you.

Resources:

• • Link to video recording here
  • 05-26-2026 city council packet